Bold ideas and innovation on display at the Fall Research Expo
On Sept. 15, hundreds of posters were presented throughout Houston Hall at the annual Fall Research Expo, representing the research projects of 410 undergraduate students conducted through the Center for Undergraduate Research.
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At the Expo, students spoke with faculty, students, and the Penn community about their work. While much of the research was conducted in Penn faculty labs and on campus, projects have taken students as far as Malawi, Morocco, Sri Lanka, and the UK.
On Sept. 15, row after row of posters—377 in total—were set up throughout Houston Hall’s two floors, representing the work of 410 undergraduate students. Penn’s annual Fall Research Expo, sponsored by the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF), is a roundup of student research from all disciplines, from linguistics and AI, whale sound tracking, and nonprofit management, to identifying strategies to sustain peer support for suicide prevention, to name a few.
Through CURF, undergraduate students apply for the opportunity to be mentored by faculty from all 12 schools and work on research projects alongside other faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. Undergraduates have worked in labs and the field in locations as close as Houston Hall itself and as far away as Malawi, Morocco, Sri Lanka, and the UK.
The Expo is an opportunity for student researchers to field questions from students, faculty, staff, and members of the public about their project findings. This event has bloomed since 2007, when just 18 posters were on display.
The annual Expo is an opportunity for student researchers to field questions from students, faculty, staff, and members of the public about their project findings.
Kevin Li, Henry Huang, and Ethan Yang worked with School of Arts & Sciences linguistics professor Jianjing Kuang on a project comparing human and AI speech in speech production and perception. Using the sentence “Molly mailed a melon” as a prompt, the team researched how AI robots can articulate a word accurately, but are unable to capture intonation, known as prosodic focus.
Ella Vance spent the summer working with Penn Carey Law’s Paul Robinson exploring the potential roots of crime, including addiction and poverty. She searched literature reviews, meta-analyses, and scholarly articles for insights. “We are attempting to summarize everything that helps evaluate the best solutions,” Vance says.
For their PURM project, Chinmay Govind and Nihar Ballamudi utilized whale sound data and artificial intelligence to better understand how many whales are in an area. Their research can help inform policymakers and environmental groups on policies involving whales.
Wendy Hernandez Higarede, Veronica Baladi, and Faith Amolo Owino engaged with Penn’s Climate and Health Education Working Group by conducting fieldwork to identify climate and health education needs on campus. Their findings will be used to assess potential education and communication strategies and will be compared with Penn’s Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 4.0.
Eri Maeda dedicated her summer to a Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program project exploring how insurance status may shape access to menopause care in the U.S. To determine realized access, Maeda recorded various data such as how soon patients can secure appointments; the length of time placed on hold; whether patients are seeking telehealth or in-person visits; the number of administrative tasks required of new patients; and whether they can book appointments at all.
Sarah Usandivaras Klaehn spent her summer as a marketing and communications intern for Girls Inc. in New York City through the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program, learning the ins and outs of an international nonprofit.
Luiza Sulea worked in the marketing department at the WXPN studio in West Philadelphia through the Summer Humanities Internship Program. “I just really wanted to do something that spoke to my creative interests and my passions but also was founded in a business. XPN is such a staple of the Philadelphia community, which I am bonded with,” Sulea says. “It’s a unique opportunity to get on the inside.”
Sierra Williams, a cultural and linguistic anthropology major, worked with Kayla Kane, research coordinator at the Cultural Heritage Center at Penn Museum, on a research project that studies the policies and practices guiding collecting activities—from acquiring new objects to returning them to countries of origin—at museums in the U.S.
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