Scholar to Scholar: Graduate Project Showcase
Friday, March 20, 2026
Presented by the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs and the Graduate Student Assembly (GSA), the Scholar to Scholar: Graduate Project Showcase is an annual event that gives master’s and doctoral students from across the university the opportunity to share their research and creative projects through poster presentations, talks, and performances. This event promotes interdisciplinary connections, facilitates networking, and offers participants valuable experience in communicating their work to non-expert audiences.
All Carnegie Mellon community members are invited and encouraged to attend Scholar to Scholar! By attending, you will have the opportunity to encounter the amazing work of CMU’s graduate students and engage in an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. Additionally, you will be able to explore possibilities related to graduate research and scholarly work within and beyond your own areas of expertise.
The event will include free snacks, beverages, a raffle, and giveaways!
2026 Event Details and Schedule
Date/Time: Friday, March 20, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Location: Rangos and Peter / Wright / McKenna, Cohon University Center
Download the program
Talks and Performances
| RANGOS 1 | |||
| Time | Location | Presenter | Title |
| 9:00-9:10 | Rangos1 | Amy Apgar (College of Engineering, Doctoral) | In Vitro Monitoring of Babesia Microti Infection Dynamics |
| 9:15-9:25 | Rangos 1 | Edwin Lebrón Pérez (College of Engineering, Doctoral) | Dynamic Crosslinked Bicontinuous Block Copolymers Synthesized Via Polymerization-Induced Microphase Separation |
| 9:30-9:40 | Rangos 1 | Joel Disu (College of Engineering, Doctoral) | Investigation of Mechanisms Associated with Chronic Pain in Adults with Sickle Cell Disease Using Multimodal Neuroimaging Techniques |
| 9:45-9:55 | Rangos 1 | Kevin Xu (College of Engineering, Doctoral) | RESynth: Reverse Engineering Netlists for Logic Synthesis Tool Identification |
| 10:00-10:10 | Rangos 1 | Kieran Elrod (College of Engineering, Doctoral) | Street View Sociability: Interpretable Analysis of Urban Social Behavior Across 15 Cities |
| 10:15-10:25 | Rangos 1 | Lauren Janicke (College of Engineering, Doctoral) | Quantifying Minimum Energy Needs for Thermal Comfort and Safety |
| 10:30-10:40 | Rangos 1 | Maria Tagliaferri (College of Engineering, Doctoral) | Systematic Evaluation of Hip Exoskeleton Assistance Parameters for Enhancing Gait Stability During Ground Slip Perturbations |
| 11:00-11:10 | Rangos 1 |
Alex Irwin, Gillian Derer, Sean Balick, and Lisa Stein (College of Fine Arts, Master's) |
Puffins in the Kitchen (musical performance) |
| 11:15-11:25 | Rangos 1 |
José Francisco Mireles Macario (Entertainment Technology Center, Master's) |
Cavern Game Development |
| 11:30-11:40 | Rangos 1 |
Alex Irwin (College of Fine Arts, Master's) |
The Foglamp Quartet: Musical Narration & The Narrative Composition Project |
| 11:45-11:55 | Rangos 1 |
Medha Gangopadhyay (Mellon College of Science, Doctoral) |
Insight into the Catalytic Mechanism of a 4-His Mononuclear Non-Heme Iron- Containing Carotenoid-Cleaving Oxygenase |
| 12:00-12:10 | Rangos 1 |
Sandhya Kasivisweswaran (Mellon College of Science, Doctoral) |
Safety Nets and Escape Plans: Principles of Microbial Decision-Making |
| 12:15-12:25 | Rangos 1 |
Jialin Li (Dietrich College, Doctoral) |
Continuity in Geometric Intuition Between Humans and Monkeys |
| 12:30-12:40 | Rangos 1 |
Yumou Wei (School of Computer Science, Doctoral) |
KCluster: An LLM-based Clustering Approach to Knowledge Component Discovery |
| 1:00-1:10 | Rangos 1 |
Anish Pyne (Mellon College of Science, Doctoral) |
Parallel Evolution of a Global Transcriptional Regulator in Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Biofilms |
| 1:15-1:25 | Rangos 1 |
Sofia Splawska (Mellon College of Science, Doctoral) |
The Secret Lives of the Milky Way’s Dwarf Galaxies |
| 1:30-1:40 | Rangos 1 |
Ivan Levkovsky (Mellon College of Science, Doctoral) |
Controlled Synthesis of Advanced Degradable Copolymers from Lipoic Acid |
| 1:45-1:55 | Rangos 1 |
Belle Wongsuwan (College of Engineering, Doctoral) |
Delivery of Mature Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane-Conductance Regulator Protein via Mechanically Generated Extracellular Vesicles |
| 2:00-2:10 | Rangos 1 |
Andy Hammer (School of Computer Science, Doctoral) |
Resilience of a System under Maximum Component Deviations |
| 2:15-2:25 | Rangos 1 |
Anupama Sitaraman (School of Computer Science, Doctoral) |
SpiderLCA: Automating Life Cycle Assessment |
| 2:30-2:40 | Rangos 1 |
Gillian Derer (College of Fine Arts, Master's) |
Social Media for the 21st Century Musician |
| 2:45-2:55 | Rangos 1 |
Diane Hu (College of Fine Arts, Master's) |
When Your Boss Is an AI Bot: Exploring Opportunities and Risks of Manager Clone Agents in the Future Workplace |
| RANGOS 3 | |||
| Time | Location | Presenter | Title |
| 9:00-9:10 | Rangos 3 | Aaron Balleisen (Dietrich College, Doctoral) | Egocentrism in Strategic Decisions |
| 9:15-9:25 | Rangos 3 | Devon Renfroe (Dietrich College, Doctoral) | What Happens When Non-Native Korean Speakers Make Mistakes with Politeness Grammar? |
| 9:30-9:40 | Rangos 3 | Owen Milner (Dietrich College, Doctoral) | Choice Principles and Hypercompletion in HoTT |
| 9:45-9:55 | Rangos 3 | Ani Gribbin (Neuroscience Institute, Doctoral) | Sequential Memory Biases in Eye Movements |
| 10:00-10:10 | Rangos 3 |
Amber Li (School of Computer Science, Doctoral) |
Planning from Point Clouds over Continuous Actions for Multi-object Rearrangement |
| 10:15-10:25 | Rangos 3 |
Thomas Lu (Tepper School of Business, Master's) |
Navigating IV: Option Trading Strategies In Earnings Season |
| 10:30-10:40 | Rangos 3 |
Nahom Mossazghi (College of Engineering, Doctoral) |
The Neural Basis of Cognitive Deficits in Adults with Sickle Cell Disease: A Task-Based fMRI Study |
| 11:00-11:10 | Rangos 3 |
Aditi Haiman (School of Computer Science, Doctoral) |
Gender Differences in Learning and Test-Taking Experiences with Digital Game-Based Assessment |
| 11:15-11:25 | Rangos 3 |
Anna Cobb (College of Engineering, Doctoral) |
Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Economics and Externalities: Is Policy Intervention Warranted? |
| 11:30-11:40 | Rangos 3 |
Darren "Ren" Butler (School of Computer Science, Doctoral) |
Developing AI Assistants for Psychologically Safe Communication in Neurodiverse Developer Communities |
| 11:45-11:55 | Rangos 3 |
Hasan Jame (College of Engineering, Doctoral) |
Uncertainty Quantification in Additive Manufacturing |
| 12:00-12:10 | Rangos 3 |
Sid Roy (College of Engineering, Doctoral) |
Beyond the Clinic: Multimodal EEG–Wearable Framework for Sickle Cell Disease Pain |
| 12:15-12:25 | Rangos 3 |
Benjamin Glaser (College of Engineering, Doctoral) |
Design of Low-Cost, Printable, High-Strength Al-Alloys for Room and High-Temperature Applications by Exploiting Rapid Solidification |
| 12:30-12:40 | Rangos 3 |
Lucy Lin (School of Computer Science, Master's) |
Qwen-3D: A Generalist 3D Vision-Language Model for Spatial Understanding |
| 1:30-1:40 | Rangos 3 |
Duncan Wood (Dietrich College, Doctoral) |
Type-Breaking Characters Predict Appreciation in Popular Culture |
| 2:00-2:10 | Rangos 3 |
Yuelin Liu (Entertainment Technology Center, Master's) |
XR Welding Edu Game |
| 2:30-2:40 | Rangos 3 |
Alicia Johnson (Dietrich College, Doctoral) |
Colored American Day at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition |
Poster Presentations
| Time | Presenter and Poster Details |
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9 - 11 a.m. Location: Peter / Wright / McKenna |
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11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Location: Peter / Wright / McKenna |
|
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1 - 3 p.m. Location: Rangos 2 |
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