Session 3

n predictive studies, it is important to know the amount of data needed for a given model to predict with reliable accuracy. In principle, larger datasets allow for more accurate prediction but are more expensive; knowing the minimal data needed to achieve a target level of predictive accuracy can be more cost-effective. There are currently general rules of thumb (e.g., ... Read More

Accents have a prevalent role across diverse sectors of society, from social belonging to economic mobility. Yet, in many social spaces, accents become sources of stigma and pressure to conform. These pressures often silence voices within diasporic communities and shape how linguistic minorities express themselves in daily life. Within immigrant families specifically, these dynamics grow more layered when accents differ ... Read More

Transformers are a type of neural network designed to process sequential data all at once rather than in order. Today, they have applications in everything from chatbots to translational tools, yet we continue to formulate a clear mathematical understanding of how they process information. Existing studies demonstrate transformer functionality, but do not investigate them from first-principles. This study applies an ... Read More

This presentation examines the negative influence of prolonged militarization on the economy of Jammu and Kashmir in Northwest India, focusing on how religious conflict, administrative change, and security measures have shaped regional development. The 2019 revocation of Article 370 intensified political instability and economic consequences, including depressed GDP growth, declining tourism, weakened trade networks, and high levels of youth unemployment. ... Read More

Polar Lows (PLs) are small but intense hurricane-like maritime cyclones that form poleward and westward of the primary extratropical cyclone circulation track over the Atlantic and Pacific Arctic regions and Southern Ocean. In 2023, a very unusual Polar Low occurred at 36º latitude near the eastern coast of the United States – the lowest latitude for a recorded PL. Through ... Read More

The internal structure of the proton is impossible to directly probe using traditional methods. Indirect methods, primarily observing the proton’s interactions with other particles, are used instead. One of the most common such methods is the Drell-Yan (DY) process. In this interaction, two hadrons collide, and a quark from one hadron and an antiquark from the other annihilate into a ... Read More

The doubly charged Higgs boson (H++) is a hypothetical particle predicted by some Type II Seesaw Mechanisms, an extension of the Standard Model (SM) that adds a Higgs triplet containing neutral, singly charged, and doubly charged bosons. At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the H++ is primarily produced via an s-channel process and identified by its decay into same-sign lepton ... Read More

Cellular senescence has been identified as a hallmark in cancer patients, as well as age-related comorbidities from accumulation of senescent cells. Growing evidence suggests that senescent cells trigger neighboring cells to become cancerous, migrate, prompt cells to re-enter the cell cycle, and activate cancer stem cells, ultimately promoting tumor survival. However, senescent cells have a vulnerability; they upregulate a certain ... Read More

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is a next-generation particle accelerator designed to investigate the internal structure of nucleons and nuclei through high-luminosity collisions of polarized electrons with protons and heavy ions. Achieving this goal requires a detector capable of precise tracking and accurate jet reconstruction. The ePIC detector is being developed by the EIC scientific community to provide high-resolution measurements of ... Read More

Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), commonly known as long COVID, includes persistent symptoms that occur months after initial infection. Although many individuals do not experience gastrointestinal symptoms during acute COVID-19, studies show an elevated risk of chronic conditions months or years after infection. One possible explanation involves the persistence of viral RNA within gastrointestinal tissues, which may lead to ... Read More

Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is the most common soft tissue pediatric cancer, and is characterized by a high grade, malignant sarcoma that resembles skeletal muscle tissue. RMS is thought to develop in response to a disrupted myogenesis process in which proliferating progenitor cells are unable to develop into mature muscle fibers. This study investigates the gene regulation and small RNA profiles of ... Read More

Neuromuscular transmission, critical for muscle contraction, depends on acetylcholine (ACh) rapidly diffusing across the synaptic cleft and binding to clustered nicotinic receptors on the postsynaptic membrane. Disruptions in this process underlie diseases like myasthenia gravis and muscular dystrophies. While synaptic geometry, receptor distribution, and kinetics have been studied separately, their combined influence on ACh signaling dynamics is poorly understood. This ... Read More

Visceral leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease responsible for approximately 70,000 deaths each year, primarily affecting populations in tropical and subtropical regions. The disease is transmitted by infected sandflies and can lead to severe systemic illness if untreated. Because current treatments are limited and drug resistance is an increasing concern, the development of new therapeutic compounds remains critical. In collaboration ... Read More

Recent developments in artificial intelligence enable machine learning algorithms to learn representations of complex information, including language and sounds, in a numerical format. This project seeks to examine if emotional information presented in text can be related to emotional information presented in audio signals. Emotional states presented in text were converted into semantic embeddings using a transformer-based language model, whereas ... Read More

Pressure ulcers are injuries to skin and underlying tissue caused by high pressures that impede blood flow, particularly near bony areas. Interface pressures exceeding 32 mmHg for extended periods significantly increase the risk of tissue damage in supine patients on traditional hospital mattresses. This work explores the potential application of hydrogel-based multilayer mattress overlay to prevent pressure ulcers by actively ... Read More

Insulytics is a SaaS (software as a service) analytics company that builds analytical solutions for property and casualty insurance companies in the commercial space, helping them transform raw submissions, policies, claims, and financial data into clear, actionable insights. This project focuses on developing a conversational AI assistant embedded within these dashboards, allowing users to ask questions about their data in ... Read More

The IMSA AI Center is part of the 1st goal of IMSA’s Vision 2033 plan, meant to educate the students of IMSA on artificial intelligence and inspire them to use it in new ways. The AI Ethics division focused on encouraging thoughtful use of AI, both for teachers and students. This was implemented through an AI ethics unit being added ... Read More

Made with the IMSA AI Center, the IMSA AI Credential is a semester-long course aimed at helping students in grades 9-12 understand the intricacies of AI and CS across underrepresented communities in Illinois. The credential focused on making interactive and easy-to-follow lessons where students are able to asynchronously learn complex topics such as machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, ... Read More

The existence of dark matter has been accepted for the last half century, yet despite clear astrophysical evidence, nothing indicative has been seen in particle accelerators. Many prevalent theories of dark matter predict a dark sector of particles, analogous to the Standard Model. A massive dark photon of a dark sector model could serve as a portal between this hidden ... Read More

The aim of this study was to evaluate and design machine learning models to perform gesture classification on Electromyography(EMG) signals. EMG signals are the electrical activity produced by neurons to stimulate and manipulate muscles. These signals have become a central modality for decoding human motor intent in applications such as prosthetic control and human-machine interaction. However, these signals are inherently ... Read More

Accurately interpreting how cells interact within their respective tissue environments is integral for studying biological systems. Recent advances in spatial transcriptomics technologies have proved capable for this purpose, with platform VisiumHD capturing data at resolutions of roughly 2 micrometers. Despite this improvement, analyzing VisiumHD results has proved a challenge, as default analysis aggregates its extremely precise data into larger 8-micrometer ... Read More

Extreme rainfall is becoming more frequent and is increasing the risk of transportation disruptions that can delay access to healthcare. Previous studies have measured regions based on different risk indicators in a flood plain. Another study uses these same factors in determining road network access during a flood during COVID-19. This study quantifies the impact of flooding on population accessibility ... Read More

When a person talks, saliva is ejected from their mouth as all droplets. These droplets form due to the separation of saliva filaments, which stretch and break apart during speech. After the saliva is ejected, it travels as a multiphase gas cloud composed of air and suspended liquid droplets. Understanding the corresponding fluid dynamics and transport is important because it ... Read More

Opioid use disorder (OUD) is one of the most stigmatized health conditions worldwide. Stigmatizing views and language used by healthcare providers may impact patient experiences and willingness to receive treatment. This study will explore stigmatizing views, as well as the amount and type of stigmatizing language used by opioid treatment program (OTP) staff. This project analyzed qualitative interviews conducted as ... Read More

Plastic waste in the environment has concerningly accumulated all around the world in the last couple of decades. When plastics degrade, they release toxic chemicals into the environment, exposing the wildlife and animals to unsafe air quality, contaminated food, and with enough exposure, long-term harm. Specific plastic types, such as PET, PLA, LDPE and others have the potential to minimize ... Read More

This project focuses on the implementation of machine learning-based voice recognition on a resource limited microcontroller platform. The primary goal is to design and integrate a system capable of identifying five distinct languages - English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Mandarin - using real-time spoken input. The system captures user speech through a voice recognition sensor, converts the audio into text, ... Read More

Some beyond the standard model (BSM) theories predict that in addition to the Higgs boson, there may be other scalar bosons, which would provide an explanation for neutrino masses. This particle, the doubly-charged Higgs boson (H++), has a primary decay mechanism involving lepton final states. Electrons and muons have distinct signatures in the detector and are thus reconstructed directly. Taus, ... Read More

In high-energy physics, Monte Carlo simulations play a vital role in modeling signal and background processes to support the search for new particles such as the doubly charged Higgs boson. However, these simulations often differ from experimental observations due to detector effects and reconstruction inefficiencies. To address these discrepancies, scale factors are applied to correct the simulated data to better ... Read More

Torpor and hibernation are responses to harsh environmental conditions such as food scarcity and cold temperatures. Torpor-like states also offer biological advantages such as neuroprotection, radioprotection, and increased lifespan. Space agencies have increased investigations on these topics, hoping to integrate them in future long-term space travel. However, the effects of torpor on mammalian organs and systems are unclear. Here, we ... Read More

In the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, communist state propaganda was historically disseminated through centralized, state-owned newspapers. Recently, algorithm-based, short video platforms such as TikTok and its Chinese counterpart, Douyin, have transformed the speed and personalization of propaganda distribution. This study investigates ideological linguistic changes in historical print-based and modern video content propaganda using computational methods. Over ... Read More

In high-energy physics experiments at high-luminosity colliders, a significant challenge is accurately modeling “pile-up” - the occurrence of multiple simultaneous proton-proton interactions within a single crossing. This pile-up creates excessive background noise that can mask the signal. While Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are essential for estimating both Standard Model backgrounds and potential new signals, the pile-up distribution in generated MC ... Read More

Acetylcholine (ACh) is a neurotransmitter that neuronal synapses use to trigger muscle movement. When this diffusion malfunctions, it can contribute to diseases like myasthenia gravis and Alzheimer’s disease. Studying acetylcholine at the molecular level in laboratories is costly and difficult because its diffusion occurs at extremely small spatial scales and within microseconds, requiring specialized imaging technology and highly controlled experimental ... Read More

Locomotor fatigue is a common challenge for traumatic transtibial prosthesis users (TTPUs), but the neuromuscular factors that contribute to this problem are not yet very well understood. Previous studies show that TTPUs fatigue more frequently than unimpaired adults during walking tasks, but these differences cannot be completely explained by typical clinical variables. This suggests that other mechanisms may play an ... Read More

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) frequently develops resistance to chemotherapy through subclonal evolution, but most existing computational oncology methods do not fully account for this. They reconstruct clonal structure or identify resistance-associated features after treatment rather than forecast resistance accumulation on evolving tumor lineages. This project develops a Bayesian deep phylogenetic pipeline that combines phyddle-based inference of tumor topology and lineage-specific ... Read More

The goal of this study is to quantify focused and distracted states in our brain by measuring reaction times. Current studies demonstrate the challenges in retaining attention in a task based environment. For example, access to smartphones in the vicinity reduces performance due to memory and attention overloads.Media houses continue to be interested in understanding viewer attention. Previous studies have ... Read More

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a chronic lung disease that primarily affects preterm infants. It is recognized as a disorder of disrupted lung development that stems from an imbalance between lung injury and repair in immature lungs exposed to factors such as hyperoxia, mechanical ventilation, inflammation, and infection. This disruption interferes with alveolar and pulmonary vascular growth and causes impaired distal ... Read More

Radiative cooling textiles are an emerging technology that creates subambient temperatures under clothing. Through minimizing solar absorption in the solar spectrum (0.2–2.5 μm) while maximizing thermal emission within the atmospheric transparency window (ATW, 8–13 μm), the fabrics reduce overheating risks and cooling costs from energy-intensive systems such as air conditioning. However, the common electrospinning method of fabrication has high time ... Read More

Although dark matter makes up much of the universe, its particle identity is still unknown. Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies near the Milky Way form in large, gravitationally-bound clumps of dark matter known as dark matter halos. Different dark matter models predict different distributions of dark matter halos which in turn predicts vastly different amounts of satellite galaxies. Thus by counting dwarf ... Read More

Recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB) is a skin disorder caused by pathogenic variants in the COL7A1 gene, resulting in the loss of functional collagen VII proteins, which anchor the epidermis to the dermis. Without these fibrils, the skin is fragile and blisters easily, leading to severe pain, chronic wounds, and increased infection risk. However, there are no effective treatments for ... Read More

This project focuses on improving and expanding the social media presence of SciTech as it transitions from a traditional museum into a STEM education organization. The goal is to strengthen digital outreach in order to better connect with families, schools, and community partners. Through analyzing current social media platforms, studying digital marketing strategies, and observing outreach methods used by similar ... Read More

Ice accretion on surfaces poses persistent safety and performance challenges for transportation systems and infrastructure in cold environments. While extensive research has focused on developing ice-phobic materials, most laboratory studies investigate ice formed from pure water, even though natural ice typically contains dissolved impurities such as salts, acids, bases, organic compounds, and mineral particles. These solutes may accumulate during freezing ... Read More

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to detect and treat because it often develops quickly and shows few symptoms in its early stages. Because of this, researchers are interested in finding molecules that can better target proteins involved in the disease. In this project, a computational approach called structure-based lead optimization was used to design potential drug ... Read More

Periodontal disease, commonly known as gum disease, is caused by an imbalance of bacteria living in the mouth. To better understand which bacteria are present in patients with periodontal disease compared to healthy individuals, we analyzed clinical oral samples using a DNA sequencing technology called PacBio Kinnex long-read sequencing. This method allows us to read the full length of the ... Read More

Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease with limited treatment options due to toxicity, resistance, and accessibility barrier. To support leishmaniasis drug discovery efforts, our group will contribute to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) Open Synthesis Network by synthesizing a novel benzoxazole amide derivative based on the benzoxazole amide lead series (e.g., DNDI0003202833). The targeted compounds will be prepared ... Read More

Artificial Intelligence is becoming a bigger part of everyday life, from creating images and writing to being used in business and even courts. Because of this, it is starting to challenge current intellectual property laws that were designed for human creations. This research explores how current legal arguments involving artificial intelligence are shaping the question of ownership, responsibility, and innovation. ... Read More

Stroke, which impacts millions of people worldwide, can cause long-lasting motor impairments which impact their daily life. Hypertonia, one of these debilitating symptoms, is the increase in muscle tone due to upper motor neuron lesions. It is caused by damage to the central nervous system, specifically the brain or spinal cord, which disrupts signals controlling muscle contraction. Living with hypertonia ... Read More

This study examines the historical development and social position of the Koryo Saram, the community of ethnic Koreans who lived within the Soviet Union and later across post-Soviet states. Beginning with Korean migration to the Russian Far East in the late nineteenth century the project analyzes how these communities were incorporated into the Soviet system of nationality classification. Soviet governance ... Read More

Acquired resistance to cancer therapy remains a critical clinical obstacle. In KRAS-mutant cancers - representing ~25% of human malignancies—targeted inhibitors such as sotorasib achieve initial responses, but median progression-free survival is only 6.3 months. Similarly, gemcitabine, the backbone of pancreatic cancer treatment, frequently fails within weeks. A unifying mechanism across these failures is the emergence of drug-tolerant persister (DTP) cells: ... Read More

The growing presence of drones enables their use as embodied AI assistants for routine tasks. However, users often lack programming or piloting expertise, necessitating interfaces that facilitate high-level interactions. Although extended reality (XR) has been used to control flight-level drone operation, there is limited understanding of which XR and Agentic AI capabilities are needed for task-level interaction with drone assistants. ... Read More

Catching moving objects represents a fundamental challenge in robotics, requiring the integration of real-time vision, data processing, trajectory prediction, and dynamic control. Numerous previous approaches use onboard vision systems, but this paper instead presents a framework that uses an external motion capture system to achieve highly precise tracking and interception of a moving ball. An OptiTrack motion capture system provides ... Read More

Autonomous driving technologies have the potential to revolutionize transportation by reducing accidents, improving traffic efficiency, decreasing fuel consumption, and increasing mobility. An autonomous vehicle’s ability to generate a safe future trajectory depends on several subsystems, including environment perception, intention prediction, trajectory prediction, and planning. However, many of these subsystems are challenged in construction zones, where environments are complex, cluttered, and ... Read More

Thermionic energy conversion (TEC) is a means of recycling waste heat into usable, clean energy without the need for moving parts or harmful byproducts. The incorporation of micro/nanoscale physics promises to significantly boost the efficiency and power throughput of TEC, making it competitive with modern clean energy systems, such as solar panels. While there is a vast depth of research ... Read More

APS Data Technologies is a technology company that offers services geared toward innovation and impactful digital solutions. They offer expertise, internships, training, and partnerships in computer science. APS Data Technologies, among other things, is currently working on a smart app in collaboration with the city of Aurora: “Destination Aurora.” The app has many branches that include access to Theater & ... Read More

For the first half of my two-year SIR project, I focused on learning about previous research adjacent to my project as I underwent the onboarding and other necessary tasks required to take my project from the preparation phase and begin my work, which started in March. For the majority of the year, I read research papers and familiarized myself with ... Read More

Posture and body position influence muscle mechanics, but their role in masticatory muscle balance during chewing has received little attention. The objective of this study was to identify whether natural head posture, forward head posture, or standing promotes the most balanced bilateral activation of the masticatory muscles. Using surface electromyography (sEMG), we measured electrical activity in the left and right ... Read More

The search for particles beyond the Standard Model (SM) is an important focus at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One candidate is the doubly charged Higgs boson (H±±). Our analysis calculates limits on the production cross-section of the doubly charged Higgs using an unbinned likelihood fit. However, since the results of this fit depend heavily on signal and background modeling, ... Read More