First Year Research Experience Calendar
January 26: Orientation and kick off; beginning of Canvas course
February 7-14: Pre-assessment
March 6: Student mid-semester check-in
April 21-May 5: Post-assessment
May 7: Research activities officially end
May 9: Deadline for students to submit a draft of the symposium poster
Fall: FYRE Symposium presentation
Fall: Roundtable discussion
2025 FYRE projects
Student Name: August Bailey
Project Title: The History of French at James Madison University
Project description: We will create a website (including photos from past JMU Yearbooks) chronicling the history of French at JMU, beginning in 1908 until today. This is in honor of the 100th anniversary of Keezell Hall in 2026 (which houses the JMU French program).
Project Advisor: Peter Eubanks (World Languages and Cultures)
Student Name: Jack Corea
Project Title: Vaccine awareness among the college population
Project description: Currently, vaccine-related discussion is an important local and national conversation. Members of our society have different opinions on vaccines. JMU itself is a community of its students, faculty members, and employees. We would like to learn about our JMU community's perception, awareness, and hesitancy related to vaccines/immunization. In this study, we will conduct a survey (quantitative part) and interviews (qualitative part). When we combine these two types of information in a study, we call it a mixed-method study. Our population of interest at JMU will be: Students, faculty members, and employees. The survey will show us the broad patterns of awareness and hesitancy, while interviews will provide deeper insights into the personal and social factors influencing attitudes toward vaccination. By including students, faculty, and staff, we will gain a holistic picture of our campus community’s perspectives.
Project Advisor: Raihan Khan (Health Sciences)
Student Name: Jessele Marquez-Diaz
Project Title: An Exploration of Training Clinics in School Psychology Programs
Project description: We’re exploring how school psychology graduate programs across the country use training clinics to support student learning. Specifically, this study will look at how these clinics are organized, what types of training they provide, and what helps—or gets in the way—of making them successful.
To do this, we’ll send a national survey (adapted from Hughes & Benson, 1986) to program directors of school psychology programs using Qualtrics. The survey will give us a clearer picture of how training clinics are currently being used today.
What we’ll do with the results:
• Quantitative responses will be summarized with descriptive statistics (e.g., frequencies, percentages).
• Open-ended responses will be examined using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to identify common themes and patterns.
percentages).
• Results will be summarized and presented in a poster at a national conference and prepared for publication
Why this matters:
This study will help us better understand the role of training clinics in preparing future school psychologists—information that could shape how graduate programs design and improve their training experiences.
Project Advisor: Tiffany Hornsby (Graduate Psychology)
Student Name: Emma Fischer
Project Title: Impact of social (meta-)perceptions
Project description: I would like to once again incorporate a FYRE student into my lab team. This spring, the team will consist of ~5 students focusing on social perceptions (how we perceive others) and meta-perceptions (how we believe others perceive us). My prior work has focused on probing for the (causal) impact of perceptions relating to race, gender, and age, as well as less-studied social categories like institutional identities (please see this link for examples: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=N2Y3ctkAAAAJ&hl=en). We will work as a team to co-develop new research questions, potentially involving novel social categories, and prepare IRB proposals to collect and analyze data to address those questions.
Project Advisor: Jessica Salvatore (Psychology)
Student Name: Meredith Groff
Project Title: The White House in the Valley: Artifact Stories from the 18th Century
Project description: Archaeology allows us to tell stories that are overlooked or forgotten. Excavations at the White House, a stone house along the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, documented layers dating to the time of its construction in 1760. This project analyzes the recovered artifacts to understand the early settlement of Europeans in a place that had been occupied by Native Americans. You will learn about daily life at the site, while also considering larger questions of global markets and colonization.
Project Advisor: Carole Nash (School of Integrated Sciences)
Student Name: Nathan Biru
Project Title: JACart: JMU Autonomous Golf-Cart
Project description: The development of an autonomous vehicle is one that has increasingly raised interest within society over the past few decades. A number of different universities have begun to find interest in developing autonomous vehicles. These universities have been experimenting with either fully autonomous vehicles, autonomous golf carts, or even just vehicles that have been programmed to drive by wire. James Madison University, located in Harrisonburg Virginia, began its effort to develop an autonomous vehicle in Spring 2018. The long-term goal of this autonomous golf cart is to be able to aid the elderly with transportation needs. Within different retirement communities, the need for transportation, even from one building to another, is vital. This innovation seeks to alleviate the stress of transportation for those individuals. However, when developing the autonomous vehicle, there were two main questions that were considered by programmers:
1.” How can machine learning models be used to extract relevant passenger information?”
2.” How should an Autonomous Vehicle user interface incorporate passenger monitoring data to provide safe and reliable mobility service for the elderly?”
Project Advisor: Samy El-Tawab (Computer Science)
Student Name: Victoria Fawole
Project Title: Auditory Representation of Spatial Data
Project description: Sound can be used to display quantitative information, as an alternative to visual data representation. This project focuses on using sound to represent spatial information (e.g., data in map form). The hope is that analysts using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to support environmental decision making will be able to consider more data than can be displayed visually.
To research this possibility, we need an experimental platform that will allow us to try different uses of sound for various data analysis tasks, and conduct human performance experiments to determine which approaches work the best.
The first goal of this project is to continue development of a plug-in for the QGIS system to allow users to choose which data they want to listen to, and using which representation. This plug-in will then stream the selected data to audio generation tools (CoreAudio) on the host Mac computer so that they can be converted into the appropriate sounds.
The result will enable research in such data representations to learn how best to use sounds in environmental decision support systems.
Project Advisor: Steve Frysinger (School of Integrated Sciences)
Student Name: Evan Khanna
Project Title: Fake Voice Image Detection
Project description: Generative Artificial intelligence is an extremely powerful and useful tool, and its capabilities, specifically in generating video and audio, seem to grow every day. However, this has also helped increase the spread of misinformation across the internet and could cause various security and privacy concerns for everyday people. While there are various tools for artificially generated text detection, such as GPTZero and Quillbot, there are not as many visible options for either video or audio detection.
The goal of this project is to design and implement a lightweight-generated video and audio detection model that can process video and audio streams in real time to determine if AI generation was used. The system will consist of machine learning models, optimized to run on edge devices for IoT use. To use these models, a Flask based video calling application will be built around the models, to provide real-time detection during calls.
Project Advisor: Suk Jin Lee (School of Integrated Science)
Student Name: Quinnie Lu
Project Title: Historic Coin Collection Digitization and Identification
Project description: Are you curious about history, technology, or both? This project with the historic coins collection at the Madison Art Collection (MAC) offers you the chance to explore all three. Students will help uncover the ownership history—called provenance—of the museum’s ancient coin collection. These coins have passed through centuries of collectors, auctions, and dealers, and your work will help reveal their stories.
You’ll start by digitizing rare historical auction catalogs, making fragile printed materials accessible to researchers around the world. Then, you’ll use tools like Python to extract images and data from those catalogs, learning digital skills that are valuable across many fields. If you’re eager to push further, you can experiment with artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to try to match MAC’s coins with those catalog images—bringing together history, coding, and cutting-edge technology.
No matter your experience level, there’s a role for you. Beginners will gain hands-on practice with digitization and basic coding, while more advanced students can stretch into AI tools and data science. You’ll be contributing to real museum research while developing a unique mix of skills in history, art, and tech—an opportunity that few undergraduate experiences can match.
Project Advisor: Jason Forsyth (Department of Engineering )
Student Name: Nadia Corea
Project Title: The role and impact of AI tools and practices that inform data visualization pedagogy
Project description: Artificial Intelligence (AI) impacts all levels of learning and is most helpful when dealing with large amounts of data. This project will perform a systematic review of past and current AI tools and practices that have been used to teach data visualization. The purpose of the project is to identify what has been done and inform future paths of research inquiry.
Project Advisor: Vetria Byrd (Computer Science)
Student Name: Thomas Kern
Project Title: Accessibility Through the Core
Project description: Few undergraduate students in Computer Science go on to research or practice purely theoretical computer science. Instead following their interests, job opportunities, or with an interest in continuing their liberal arts education, they go on to roles in virtually every sector of the economy and apply their knowledge and skills. Through their work, they may have an impact on the lives and experiences of millions or even billions of people. An estimated 15% of the global population has a disability, increasing to almost half of the population of older adults. An embarrassingly small percentage of technologies, even those required to access essential products and services meet accessibility standards, but an even smaller percentage of computer science students consider themselves education on disabilities, accessibility, and assistive technologies. Join us in the LabLab Lab to continue the on-going work of another student’s honors thesis to integrate accessibility awareness and education into core computer science courses’ curricula.
Project Advisor: Michael Stewart (Computer Science)
Student Name: Andrea Miller
Project Title: What It Sounds Like
Project description: Nothing but the code now
Nothing but the notes from what I build
The loops and patterns tangled, bugs I’m battling
Things I never thought I’d understand
I try to refactor, I try to debug it
My logic’s twisted, my state divided
My changes all collided
I don’t know why I ever doubted my de-sign
Score broken 'to a million pieces, and it can’t go back
But now I'm hearing all the beauty in the broken tracks
The rests to help me breathe, dissonance and harmony
My score without staff lines — this is what it sounds like
Why did I arrange up the voices stuck inside my code?
I should’ve let the drafted quick-takes meet the tape instead
Show me what’s underneath, I’ll find your melody
The song we turned to code — this is what it sounds like
We’re blocking through the silence, we’re coding, creative
Coding for the first time — you’re not alone
We'd written the beams in, we put the rests between them
But none of us'd ever composed our own
So we were newbies, so we weren't coders
So we weren’t flawless, we’re still composers
Programmers, performers, no hiding — I’m tired
But block out the mire and I’ll be right here by your side
Come join us in the LabLab Lab to explore direct manipulation user interfaces for bi-directional authoring of musical scores and a corresponding programming language representation.
Project Advisor: Michael Stewart (Computer Science)
Student Name: Gabrielle Mingo
Project Title: Application of AI to support data visualization teaching and learning
Project description: AI (Artificial Intelligence) is everywhere! It’s seen in every aspect of daily life, from health and fitness to education; all fueled by data. Lots of data! Data visualization is the process of transforming data into meaning. This project will give students an opportunity to explore the intersection of AI, data visualization and the multidisciplinary nature of the two fields. This project aims to investigate how AI has been applied in data visualization education, which approaches, techniques, and architectures have been adopted, and how they have contributed to teaching, learning, engagement, and curiosity in undergraduate courses. The findings will help identify successful practices, highlight gaps, and reveal opportunities for developing new approaches to enhance both teaching and learning experiences.
Project Advisor: Carolina Veiga Ferreira de Souza (Computer Science)
Student Name: Mohammad Najeeb
Project Title: Detecting Hidden Malfunctions in Smart Systems: A First Step into Cybersecurity for Infrastructure
Project description: Industrial systems like elevators, water tanks, and factory machines are controlled by smart computers called PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers). These systems are designed to be safe and precise but what if something started going wrong very slowly, without anyone noticing? This project explores how small, hidden changes to sensors or internal settings can quietly make a system behave in unsafe ways over time. You’ll work on simulating one of these systems (like a simple elevator) and tracking how its behavior changes, even when the control program appears normal.
You’ll collect and analyze system data to spot signs of what’s called behavioral drift — the kind of subtle manipulation that real attackers might use in critical infrastructure. You don’t need prior experience in cybersecurity or control systems, just curiosity, willingness to learn, and basic programming or data analysis skills. You’ll gain hands-on experience working with simulations, Python scripts, visualizations, and basic concepts in cyber-physical systems. Your work will contribute to a larger research effort aimed at protecting real-world infrastructure from stealthy attacks.
If you enjoy problem solving, systems thinking, or working with code and data, this project is a great introduction to applied research in cybersecurity.
Project Advisor: Adeen Ayub (Computer Science)
Student Name: Abbigail Schnitz
Project Title: Enhancing Campus Well-Being: Curating an Evidence-Informed App Guide
Project description: Interested in how technology can support mental health? This project offers hands-on experience in digital health research while making a real impact on campus. You’ll work with a small team to review and organize mobile mental health apps, helping create a trusted guide that highlights apps backed by evidence.
Your work will include collecting and cleaning app information (like ratings, downloads, and developer details), as well as searching for scientific studies that evaluate app effectiveness. Along the way, you’ll build skills in data management, research methods, teamwork, and communication. You’ll also help share findings through presentations and materials designed for campus and community use.
By the end of the semester, you’ll have contributed to a resource that supports well-being and gained valuable experience in digital health—a growing field at the intersection of technology and healthcare. This project is ideal if you’re curious about health, tech, or making a positive difference.
Project Advisor: Prajakta Belsare (Computer Science)
Student Name: Jacob Kline
Project Title: Toward a Happy City: Tracing Community Perceptions in Harrisonburg through Social Media
Project description: What does a city feel like to a person, and why does it matter? We often describe cities based on what we see, but emotion plays a powerful role in how we experience and remember them. Feelings of joy, stress, belonging, or frustration can shape whether we see a place as welcoming or challenging. However, these emotional layers of urban life are often overlooked in how we study or design cities.
This project investigates how emotions are expressed in Harrisonburg through digital life. More specifically, it will measure and map how different emotions are distributed across the city—creating an "emotional landscape"—by analyzing a large number of geotagged posts from Twitter/X. The identified patterns will then be linked to events and points of interest (such as parks, restaurants, festivals or local events) to understand how urban spaces and activities foster positive or negative emotional connections between people and the built environment.
By uncovering this invisible but meaningful layer of urban life that emotion represents, the project will provide new insights into how emotions shape our experience of Harrisonburg and how the city can move toward becoming a happier, more livable place.
Project Advisor: Qingqing Chen (School of Integrated Science)
Student Name: Ella Sampson
Project Title: Using satellite embedding dataset to attribute the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in West Africa
Project description: Forested ecosystems provide essential services, including carbon storage, water cycle regulation, soil erosion protection, and supporting wildlife habitats and biodiversity. However, tropical forests have experienced frequent disturbances from both natural and anthropogenic causes in recent decades. Satellite images have been widely used to monitor deforestation and forest degradation. Satellite embedding datasets are produced using Foundation Models trained on large quantities of satellite images from optical, Radar, and LiDAR sensors. Embedding representations are learned across many sensors and images, which generally overcome common issues associated with individual satellite images, such as clouds, scan lines, and sensor artifacts, making them essentially analysis-ready for classification, regression, and change detection analyses. In this project, we will explore the use of the Satellite Embedding dataset produced by AlphaEarth Foundations of Google to attribute the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the tropical forests of West Africa.
Project Advisor: Xiaojing Tang (School of Integrated Science)
Student Name: Bo Johnson
Project Title: Under-utilization of AI tools in Sport Management Education
Project description: Are you interested in sports, technology, or education? This research project offers a unique opportunity to explore the growing gap between artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and its actual use in sport management education.
While AI tools are transforming how sports are played, managed, and marketed through data analytics, performance tracking, fan engagement, and many sport management programs have yet to fully integrate these technologies into their curriculum. This project aims to investigate why that gap exists.
As a student researcher, you will help review existing academic programs, survey faculty or students, and analyze how (or if) AI tools are currently being used in sport management education. You'll also explore potential barriers, such as lack of awareness, training, or resources. Ultimately, this work could help shape more forward-thinking, tech-savvy sport management programs.
This is a great opportunity to build research experience, work closely with a faculty mentor, and contribute to a topic at the intersection of sports, education, and innovation. Students from all majors are welcome to apply, no technical background in AI is required, just curiosity and motivation to learn!
Project Advisor: Sandhya Manjunath (Hart School of Hospitality, Sport & Recreation Management)
Student Name: Allyna Flom
Project Title: Sport Events and Facilities Management
Project description: I have two major research projects ongoing which students can join to the extent they feel comfortable. They can join one or both projects.
The first investigates the impacts of sport events (FIFA World Cup, Olympic Games, College sports, etc.) on host communities and other stakeholders. In this research, I analyze how these events are managed, and offer insights for event managers to create a more positive impact while balancing their organization's mission and goals.
The second examines the management of sport facilities tourism operations such as stadium tours and museum exhibitions. In this research, I analyze how sport organizations can improve these operations to provide a more enjoyable and satisfying experience for sport consumers.
Project Advisor: Jonathan Oliveira (Hart School of Hospitality, Sport & Recreation Management)
Student Name: Loza Woldesemait
Project Title: Perceiving Place in Play: Digital Placemaking and Authenticity in Tourism
Project description: Digital games are increasingly shaping how we imagine and experience destinations, offering unique opportunities for cultural storytelling and tourism engagement. While virtual and augmented reality often dominate discussions of immersion, computer games—especially those that blend narrative, interactivity, and creativity—present powerful yet underexplored tools for digital placemaking. Games not only simulate landscapes but also construct cultural meanings and a sense of authenticity, influencing how players perceive real-world places and identities.
Guided by three research questions, this project asks: (1) How do game components signify authenticity, beyond objective accuracy? (2) How do they communicate and shape place meanings through symbolic representation and narrative design? (3) What downstream effects emerge from these experiences?
Students who join this project will investigate these questions through qualitative methods, including gameplay-based exploration and participant interviews, and contribute to advancing theoretical conversations on authenticity and tourism in digital spaces.
Project Advisor: Yiran Liu (Hart School of Hospitality, Sport & Recreation Management)
Student Name: Maya Canatella
Project Title: Intellectual Discomfort as Professional Growth during International Study
Project description: This summer, I am spending two weeks in the Balkan country of Kosovo with a group of JMU secondary education students learning concepts of trauma-informed pedagogy. In studying an unfamiliar subject, students will navigate the intellectual discomfort that is a necessary component of the learning process. Kosovo is not a well-visited country, so students are likely unfamiliar with its history, language, and culture, which supports an additional opportunity for intellectual discomfort. I am developing a study, then, to better understand how students' experiences with intellectual discomfort within the context of international study supports their professional development as future teachers.
This project focuses on creating three different elements of the study this spring so I can conduct the research this summer while in Kosovo:
1. Review of research published in the last 10 years addressing intellectual discomfort, preservice teachers’ development, and/or engagement in international study
2. Development of a research study to examine students' engagement with and response to intellectual discomfort
3. Creation of a profile of Kosovo that collates and summarizes key information related to the city of Prishtina as well as historical, cultural, and political elements relevant to Kosovo’s positioning for international study
Project Advisor: Melanie Shoffner (Middle, Secondary & Mathematics Education)
Student Name: Miah Leiva-Saba
Project Title: Exploring animal responses to climate change
Project description: My lab studies how animals interact with one another and their environment, and how those interactions might be shifting because of climate change. We do research in high mountain environments where climate change is happening very quickly. The FYRE student and I will work with existing data collected in the high Andes of Peru or the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to develop a research question and answer it. Example questions could be: Is there a seasonal pattern to animal activity in high elevation landscapes that have recently lost their glacier cover? Have the internal body temperatures of wild salamanders increased over the last 5 years?
Project Advisor: Kelsey Reider (Biology)
Student Name: Nathan Koon
Project Title: Generation and molecular characterization of CRISPR/Cas9-induced mutations in immunity-associated genes in tomato
Project description: In this project, we will use a powerful gene-editing tool called CRISPR/Cas9 to study how tomatoes defend themselves against bacterial pathogens. Our goal is to modify or disrupt key genes involved in plant immunity and then examine how these changes affect tomato growth, development, and resistance to infection. Along the way, you will gain hands-on experience with modern lab techniques such as DNA cloning, bacterial transformation, DNA extraction, PCR, and sequencing, and learn how plant genomes can be modified through plant transformation and genome editing. You will also practice inoculating plants with bacterial strains and recording their responses to pathogen attack. The ultimate goal of this project is to discover how we can make tomatoes stronger and more resistant to disease - without sacrificing yield - knowledge that could improve agriculture and global food security.
Project Advisor: Ning Zhang (Biology)
Student Name: William Devlin
Project Title: Characterizing the zooplankton communities of the Belle Isle rock pools.
Project description: Zooplankton, small aquatic animals, play a critical role in the food web of many freshwater and marine systems. While small, zooplankton are very diverse and understanding what generates and maintains this diversity is critical to preserving this diversity and thus the functioning of freshwater ecosystems. This project is working to determine the environmental factors that are important in structuring the zooplankton communities in the Belle Isle rock pools in Richmond, VA. This system consists of hundreds of rock pools that vary in environmental factors such as temperature, depth, and flooding. We visit the rock pools four times a year to sample the zooplankton communities and track them across time. We then score these samples under a dissecting microscope, identifying and counting different types of zooplankton. The main groups of zooplankton we find include copepods, ostracods (seed shrimp), and cladocerans (water fleas). In addition to this phenotypic characterization, we are also working on developing ways to characterize these communities using genetics, which would allow for more high-throughput processing.
Project Advisor: Karen Barnard-Kubow (Biology)
Student Name: Griffin Andrews
Project Title: Establishing pollinator plant species for Monarch Butterflies
Project description: Climate change and loss of habitat across migration routes is affecting pollinators, such as the monarch butterfly. In a greenhouse study, we will determine the best methods for growing key plant species for monarchs depending on their phenology and nectar abundance. Prior greenhouse studies in this lab have found that native milkweed species (the host plant for the monarch) are difficult to grow in the greenhouse and establish in the outside garden. This season we will experiment with hardy, drought-tolerant, fast growing species, such as the Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) in addition to a few of the more successful milkweed species. The student will learn how to cultivate ten plant species in the greenhouse in the early spring, prepare the pollinator garden bed, and plant the seedlings in the garden in the late spring. The student will monitor monarch butterfly visits and caterpillars on the different plant species in the fall semester if they continue in our lab.
Project Advisor: Heather Griscom (Biology)
Student Name: Gabriela Koleva
Project Title: Investigating pigment evolution in Campion flowers
Project description: We are investigating the convergent evolution of red flower color in the genus Silene. Red is a rare color in this genus (1% of the genus!), and it seems that the few species that have red flower color use different pigments to achieve this hue. Changes in flower color has implications for floral evolution, plant-pollinator coevolution, and pollinator preference. We work on many aspects of floral color in the lab, from the chemistry, to genetics, to field assays with pollinators. The open position for a FYRE student would be to work with the pigments. We will be extracting and identifying which visible pigments are used for red and pink visual colors and which UV pigments (invisible to humans) are present in white, pink, and red colored flowers. We also use a photographic and spectrophotometric approach to measure petal reflectance to understand how different animals may perceive different colors. Knowing which pigments evolve where will help us to make predictions about the specific genetic changes that allowed red flower color to evolve. This project is at the interface of biochemistry and evolutionary biology.
Project Advisor: Andrea Berardi (Biology)
Student Name: Wahid khan
Project Title: Investigating exotic forms of matter via electron-proton interactions in the ten gigaelectron-volt range
Project description: While most of the hadronic matter in the visible Universe is made out of up and down quarks (proton: up, up, down; neutron: up, down, down), the Standard Model predicts, and experimental nuclear and particle physics results provide evidence, for the existence of four more quarks: strange, charm, bottom, and top. Of these, the strange quark is of particular importance because it might have played a role in the first moments after the Big Bang and, as astronomical observations suggest, is essential in understanding the later stages in the lifecycle of certain stars.
Studying the production of strange matter is extremely challenging given the ubiquity of regular hadronic matter. Typically only one out of 10k-100k high energy interactions produce a strange particle.
As part of the larger Jefferson Lab open strangeness production program, in this project we study the production of excited states of the Lambda and Sigma0 hyperons (quark structure: uus) via proton-electron scattering. The data was acquired at Jefferson Lab using a high intensity 10.6 GeV electron beam, a liquid hydrogen target, and the HMS and SHMS electromagnetic spectrometers available in the experimental Hall C.
Project Advisor: Loana Niculescu (Physics and Astronomy)
Student Name: Zoie Wagner
Project Title: Uncovering student misconceptions in inorganic chemistry: exploring the f-block
Project description: One of the challenges of teaching and learning inorganic chemistry is the breadth of content covered in the course. When students do not connect their learning to core ideas, they can develop a fragmented understanding of chemical concepts. The goal of this project is to develop classroom activities that promote meaningful learning of chemistry by connecting new learning to prior knowledge and disciplinary core ideas. The first step in designing effective activities is to uncover student misconceptions that interfere with learning. We will explore student ideas about periodicity, bonding, or reactivity in the f-block elements; how these elements compare to the rest of the periodic table; and connections between macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic levels of chemistry. As part of this project, you will use qualitative analysis to examine participant responses to a written question and interview data.
Project Advisor: Barbara Reisner (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
Student Name: Callie Maupin
Project Title: Perspectives on Objectives: Developing science communication learning objectives for STEM undergraduates
Project description: There is often a disconnect between science and society, where people within the community think about science differently than scientists themselves. STEM undergraduates often talk to people within their communities about science. In this way, they are boundary spanners, they are reaching between this divide and sharing scientific information. However, students often use ineffective communication strategies when they talk about science. This can include presenting themselves as the authority and/or shaming those who disagree with them, or with the broader scientific consensus. It is important for undergraduates to learn how to communicate about scientific topics effectively because they can reach audiences that are frequently inaccessible to scientific researchers. While science communication is recognized by educators as an important competency, many scientists and science instructors have never been trained to communicate with non-scientists. Instructors who have limited experience in science communication struggle to teach effective science communication skills. The goal of this project is to develop learning objectives (LOs) that can be used to train undergraduate students in science communication. It will involve working with a team of researchers across the U.S. to find, collate, and develop new LOs, and to test them by surveying and interviewing science communication experts.
Project Advisor: Rosario Marroquin Flores (Biology)
Student Name: Coyt Walsh
Project Title: Application of Drone Based Imagery (Thermal and NIR) to Enhance Recreational Fishing in the Shenandoah Valley Region of VA.
Project description: Recreational fishing is a popular practice in the Shenandoah Valley (SV) region of Virginia. The region consists of hundreds of miles of productive waterways. One challenge for anglers is determining the best time to start fishing. This is due to the streams' variety of cold and warm water habitats, which change across locations and seasons. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used for aerial surveys of fishery activities, though their potential remains underexplored. The proposed study will utilize drone-based thermal (IR) and near-infrared (NIR) imagery to detect water temperature and thermal anomalies, as well as to observe land cover changes in the vegetation along 2-3 spring-fed streams in the SV region. Drone imagery will be collected monthly from January to April 2026. High-resolution IR imagery will aid in mapping thermal anomalies, while NIR will be used to analyze changes in vegetation. This is important because vegetation impacts water clarity and temperature by affecting the stream microclimate. Mapping thermal anomalies and vegetation changes will help us understand how spring temperatures relate to the best fishing times, both spatially and temporally. Moreover, many fish species are cold-blooded and thus are very sensitive to variations in water temperature. Identification of thermal anomalies helps locate fish species, as these anomalies create variations in oxygen concentrations that impact the abundance of the fish species.
Project Advisor: Dhanuska Wijesinghe (Geology and Environmental Science)
Student Name: Sophia Benard
Project Title: Statics and Dynamics of Granulated Systems
Project description: From snow, to seeds, and asteroid belts, granulated systems are present all around us. Despite our familiarity with them, fundamental aspects of their behavior, such as how they flow or jam, are poorly known. In this experimental project, we aim to better understand what makes granulated systems clog, unclog and flow. We probe the local interactions using imaging techniques seeking to uncover how these interactions impact the global flow behavior. Unveiling the interplay between microscopic and macroscopic behavior will provide a framework to improve critical industrial processes and understand natural phenomena such as avalanches, landslides and earthquakes.
Project Advisor: Klebert Feitosa (Physics and Astronomy)
Student Name: Bhargav Kuniki
Project Title: Computational investigation of silver/copper nanocatalysts for selective ethylene epoxidation
Project description: Epoxidation, or the transformation of ethylene into ethylene oxide, is an industrial chemical reaction which is valued at billions of dollars on the global market. It is critical that reactions occurring on this scale have high selectivity to mitigate greenhouse gas emission, like the formation of carbon dioxide (CO2). Experimental measurements demonstrate that adding dissociated water to silver-copper catalysts causes reactions with ethylene which selectively produce more ethylene oxide and less CO2. To understand why ethylene follows different chemical reaction pathways in the presence of dissociated water, this computational surface science project will use software based on quantum mechanics to predict the structure and energies of ethylene molecules as they react on silver-copper catalyst surfaces. This Department of Energy funded research project will be conducted using high performance computing (HPC) resources available at JMU and DOE National Laboratories.
Project Advisor: Kendra Letchworth-Weaver (Physics and Astronomy)
Student Name: Joshua Wowk
Project Title: Magnetic and Structural Perturbations in YCrO₃
Project description: Yttrium orthochromite (YCrO₃) is a member of the rare-earth orthochromite family (RCrO₃, R = rare earth), which crystallizes in the orthorhombically distorted perovskite structure with space group Pbnm and is known for its rich interplay between structure and magnetism. YCrO₃ is particularly interesting because it is reported to exhibit multiferroicity. (Coexistence of magnetic and ferroelectric behavior). In YCrO3, chromium ions order antiferromagnetically around 140 K, with a weak ferromagnetic component. In this project, we will investigate the rare-earth-doped Yttrium orthochromite Y₁₋ₓRₓCrO₃ by doping YCrO₃ with small amounts of other rare-earth elements on the Yttrium site. We will explore how the size and magnetic moment of these rare-earth ions influence the crystal structure and magnetism.
In this project, the student will synthesize materials with varying doping levels of several rare earth elements (Lu, Yb, Nd, etc.) using high-temperature furnaces and investigate their crystal structures using an X-ray diffractometer. After students synthesize high-quality samples, we will measure the magnetic properties of these materials using a PPMS Vibrating Sample Magnetometer at low temperatures/high magnetic fields, and study how structure influences magnetism. Ultimately, we will extend this approach to more complex multi-cation or high-entropy versions of this system.
Project Advisor: Sachith Dissanayake (Physics and Astronomy)
Student Name: Jeremy Ames
Project Title: Digitizing the Charles Lisanby Archives
Project description: Charles Lisanby (1924–2013) was a visionary production designer who transformed the visual language of American television. A pioneer of early color TV, Lisanby won three Emmy Awards, earned sixteen nominations, and became the only production designer ever inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. His groundbreaking work introduced innovations such as neon lighting and illuminated risers, shaping the look of iconic broadcasts and influencing generations of designers.
James Madison University proudly houses the complete archive of Charles Lisanby’s work—including original sketches, set models, photographs, and documentation spanning his extraordinary career. With a new curator now leading the archive, JMU is launching an initiative to make this remarkable collection more accessible and widely utilized by students, scholars, and the public.
As part of this project, students will gain direct, hands-on experience with professional museum and archival practices. Opportunities include archival organization, object handling, scanning, and documentation, offering valuable skills applicable across the fields of museum studies, art history, design, and media. By contributing to this effort, students will help preserve and share the legacy of one of television’s most influential creative minds, while also preparing themselves for careers in cultural heritage and the arts.
Project Advisor: James Ogden (School of Theatre & Dance)
Student Name: Julia Egnot
Project Title: Impact Space Research Assistant
Project description: Impact Space is a new hub for performance, technology, and collaborative research at JMU, developed by Assistant Professors Tara Lee Burns (Dance) and Javier Padilla (Dance). As both a physical and conceptual site, Impact Space supports experimentation with motion capture, virtual reality, and interactive systems while serving as a resource for students and faculty across disciplines.
The First-Year Research Assistant will play a vital role in the development of this initiative. Responsibilities include documenting rehearsals, workshops, and VR experiments through video and photography; organizing and archiving media in shared drives; and assisting with the setup of cameras, projectors, and VR headsets. The assistant will also support the maintenance of Impact Space by helping track equipment use, scheduling, and keeping the space organized for ongoing research activity.
This position offers opportunities to engage directly in creative research by participating in technology tests and providing user feedback on interactive systems. The student will gain experience in research documentation, media management, and collaborative project development while contributing to a growing cross-disciplinary lab. This role is well-suited to a first-year student with curiosity, organizational skills, and interest in performance, technology, or the arts.
Project Advisor: Tara Burns (School of Theatre and Dance (STAD))
Student Name: Connor Dunford
Project Title: Wind Band Transcription
Project description: Students will create a wind band transcription. The process will involve selecting appropriate repertoire, exploring orchestration techniques specific to wind band, creating the final transcription, and exploring the publication process.
Project Advisor: Chris DeVona (Band/Ensembles)
