Nearly 140 undergraduate students showcased their academic work at the College of Arts and Sciences’ (A&S’) annual Undergraduate Research Festival on April 17 in the Life Sciences Complex's Milton Atrium. Faculty, staff, peers and guests—including members of the Dean’s Advisory Board, who received a special preview the night before—turned out to see the breadth and quality of student scholarship on display.

This year's festival featured projects spanning an impressive range of disciplines, with titles from “New Frontiers in Forensic DNA Analysis Evaluating Single Cell Sequencing” (Ava Polak ’26) to “‘Forgive My Northern Attitude’: Are Northeasterners Really That Rude?” (Abram Speek ’26). Together, the projects reflected A&S' commitment to research that bridges the sciences and the humanities, examining the world's most pressing questions through rigorous, creative inquiry.

With 99 poster exhibitions and 26 faculty-moderated presentations, this year's festival continued its annual tradition of being among the largest of any such event at Syracuse University.

Students from across A&S participated, representing departments and programs including African American studies, art and music histories, biology, biotechnology, chemistry, communication sciences and disorders, Earth and environmental sciences, forensics, human development and family science, languages, literatures, and linguistics, mathematics, neuroscience, philosophy, physics, and psychology.

A selection of students shared brief summaries of their research. Watch their interviews below.

Psychology student Treston Pulley ’29 shares the process behind his project, “Recent Alcohol Use Moderates the Relationship between Psychological Distress and Daytime Sleepiness among Military-Connected Students.”

Biology major Keira Bowers ’26 discusses the conclusions from her project, “Behavioral State and Social Context Shape Vocal Communication in Humpback Whales.”

Baily Snead ’26, a health humanities and biotechnology major, offers background on her project, “How Television and Film Can Work to Reverse Stigma and Misconception Surrounding Sickle Cell Disease.”