Posters - 2026

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  Postcolonial Identity Formation of Somali Borderland Identity

  Sunny Ngethe

  Colonial borders in Africa divided long-standing communities, disrupting shared systems of culture, mobility, and identity. Somali populations, spread across Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, present a unique case of transnational identity persistence. Somalis have maintained strong cultural unity despite state-imposed divisions. This study examines how this communities navigate identity across borders shaped by colonialism and post-independence governance. Using qualitative analysis of historical and political content, this study draws on postcolonial theory and border studies to analyze how identity is constructed and maintained across imposed borders.

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  SOX18 Unleashed Exploring the Transcriptomic Landscape - Differential Gene Expression Analysis via RNA Seq in Overexpressed SOX18

  Van Nguyen, Kahlie Hernandez, and Monabelle Elbayeh

  Cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide, and childhood sarcomas such as Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) and Ewing Sarcoma (ES) are particularly aggressive with limited targeted treatment options. Despite advancements in cancer therapies, metastatic sarcomas still have a survival rate below 30%, emphasizing the need for new therapeutic targets. SOX18, a transcription factor has played a role in vascular development and endothelial differentiation, functioning as a key driver of angiogenesis. In cancer, increased SOX18 expression has been linked to dysregulated cell migration, invasion, and therapy resistance mechanisms. However, the extent to which SOX18 influences RMS and ES at the transcriptional level remains an open question. The cell lines (ES7, ES8, RH41, JR1) were sent for RNA sequencing and bioinformatics analyses to characterize the transcriptomic effects of SOX18 overexpression. By identifying differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and enriched signaling pathways, this study seeks to find the potential mechanisms by which SOX18 contributes to sarcoma progression, therapy resistance, and immune evasion. We explore whether SOX18’s transcriptional influence in Ewing Sarcoma is primarily linked to immune modulation, extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, or epigenetic regulation. Given the distinct molecular landscapes of ES7 and ES8, this research also seeks to explore whether SOX18 exerts differential oncogenic effects in different Ewing Sarcoma subtypes, potentially guiding future therapeutic strategies targeting SOX18-driven pathways.

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  Japan's 5-year Plan with India: Rethinking Cultural Homogeneity in the Workplace

  Sydeny Nieto

  In 2025, Japan and India had finalized the Japan-India 5-year Action Plan, where Japan will open their workplaces to over 500,000 Indian citizens over the next 5 years. While studies show how the plan would help fix labor shortage and population problems, it lacks public analysis and the data supporting Japan's readiness to take on this demographic change. This research addresses this gap by analyzing both economic benefit and public perspective toward migration. Highlighting broader impacts the plan would have on Japan's society, along with cultural challenges it may pose for Japan.

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  Does social grouping influence object play by Belugas?

  Javier Obiltas and Phillip Clayton

  Play is defined as voluntary behavior that differs from functional behaviors and typically occurs in low-stress environments. In cetaceans, object play has been linked to development, motor skill practice, and social learning. Play behavior is an important factor of development in belugas, because belugas are social animals that live and interact within groups, the composition of these groups or "groupings" might influence their play behaviors. Understanding how said groupings may affect the play rates may help researchers better understand the development of behavior and social dynamics of the beluga groupings. The purpose of this study was to see whether grouping influences the frequency, type, and development of beluga object play across mixed-age groups. Behavioral data were collected from recorded video observation and coded using a ethogram designed to identify types of object play. Observation was categorized based on social grouping present at the time of play. The frequency of play were measured and compared about different grouping types. It was predicted that groups including juveniles would show higher frequency of object play. It was also hypothesised that mixed-age groups display greater play frequency than adult-only groupings. Examining these relationships between social grouping and object play. The results did not support our hypotheses of mixed age groups showing greater play durations than adult-only groups and object play frequency will be higher in groupings that include juveniles.

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  Why Democratic Backsliding is Legal: Judicial Legitimacy and Institutional Decay in the United States

  Sherlyn Ochoa

  “In the United States, democratic backsliding is not a violation of the law—it is increasingly a product of it.” Democratic change often occurs through judicial interpretation Courts shape rights, participation, and equality Focus: how judicial legitimacy allows major democratic shifts—both expansion and restriction of rights

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  From Stacks to Scholarship: A Legacy of the Louis J. Library (2000-2026)

  Janet Ojinnaka and Diane M. Duesterhoeft

  In 2027, St. Mary's University will celebrate the Dodransbicentennial (175th) anniversary of its founding.
  
  In 2025, the Louis J. Blume Library celebrated the 25th anniversary of its renaming from the Academic Library. Here, we highlight some milestones from the library's history.

  More information can be found here: https://lib.stmarytx.edu/tour/timeline

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  Comparative Analysis of MLP and CNN Models for Cardiac Arrhythmia Classification

  Veltman Okey-Ejowhor and Vahid Emamian

  Electrocardiogram (ECG) is a record of the electric activity of the heart over time. ECG analysis plays a pivotal role in diagnosing critical heart conditions. Significant developments have been made in the realm of deep learning and applied artificial intelligence. These deep learning models have been utilized heavily because of their ability to analyze deep morphological features of each signal. The model architecture used in this study is a convolutional neural network (CNN) combined with a multi-layered perceptron (MLP). The MLP acts as an input filter that classifies normal heartbeat signals from abnormal. The CNN is the second filter in the architecture that classifies any signals marked abnormal by the MLP into one of five different arrhythmias: Normal, Supraventricular ectopic beat, Ventricular ectopic beat, Fusion beat, and Unknown beat. The CNN model had a validation accuracy of 98.214% after 10 epochs (iterations) of training and testing. The MLP model yielded similar results during testing with a validation accuracy of 92.305%. These models were trained on Google Colab’s A100 High-RAM GPU environment to ensure the models are robust and industry-applicable. The data used to train these models were made publicly available via resources such as PhysioBank and Kaggle.

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  Muscular Degeneration in Caenorhabditis elegans by Microplastic and Chemical Exposure through locomotion analysis

  Juan Pablo Olvera Rodriguez, Angelica Cue-Leon, and David Mares

  We use Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as a model organism to investigate the effects of microplastic and chemical exposure on muscle structure and function.

  • Microplastics (MP) are pieces of plastic less than 5 μm, and Nanoplastics (NP) are less than 1 μm. Microplastics are man-made pollutants and have been found in the environment and in the food and water sources, including drinks from plastic bottles (Hu, 2020). • Our work relates environmental contamination to potential biological consequences at the muscular level, providing insight into how pollutants may contribute to degenerative damage.

  • Polystyrene (PS) MPs alone and combined with di-butyl-phthalate (DBP) lead to reduced fertility and lifespan in C. elegans, with greater defects seen with MPS +DBP than either component alone (Maldonado et al, 2025). • Exposure to MPs of varying size and composition leads to reduced motility in C. elegans and other organisms. (Meng et al, 2025, Li et al, 2024 and Jewett et al, 2022). • Here we test for the effects of MP and combined DBP exposure on two complementary assays: ü Swimming Assays (locomotion, behavioral changes) ü Phalloidin Staining (muscle structure, physiological changes) • The assays will let us understand muscle degeneration caused by microplastics and chemicals. Using phalloidin staining, we can directly compare muscle fibers between normal and abnormal, resulting in uncoordinated swimming movements (Paquette et al, 2023).

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  Investigating RAD14 Gene Nucleotide Excision Repair on G-Quadruplexes

  Juan Pablo Olvera Rodriguez, Tyna Trevino, Yvette Gonzalez, and Georgia Romike

  DNA is typically found as a double-stranded helical structure; however, it can be found in different types of structures, such as G-quadruplexes (G4s). These are structures formed when DNA sequences are rich in Guanines, which interact with each other by hydrogen bonding, forming stacked G-tetrads. These guanine-rich structures are known for interacting with DNA during important cell processes, such as recombination and replication, leading to instability and DNA damage (Grey et al., 2014). If not treated properly, these structures may contribute to mutations and cancer development. To solve these issues, cells have developed maintenance pathways such as Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER). NER is known for removing bulky bases by excising DNA damage segments (Scharer, 2026).

  As a class project for Cell and Molecular Biology, we were tasked with exploring whether Nucleotide Excision Repair Pathways can remove G-Quadruplex Structures (G4) [Figure 1] from DNA in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast). From previous research in this field, we believe that NER-deficient yeast will be highly sensitive to treatment with G4-binding drugs due to NER removing harmful G4s and preventing G4-induced damage. We were challenged to replace the RAD14 gene in wild-type yeast with the URA3 gene. Which would then allow us to test our hypothesis of whether NER-deficient yeast has higher sensitivity to treatment with G4-binding drugs than NER-proficient yeast.

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  Beyond Technology Acceptance: AI Adoption in the United States and Korean Accounting Firms

  Madeline Ortega and Brenda Vazquez Saavedra

  A comparison of AI adoption between the United States and South Korea

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  Financial Literacy and Fraud Vulnerability in Digital Finance: Evidence from the 2024 NFCS

  Mercedes Palacios Diaz

  Digital finance has expanded rapidly through fintech platforms and cryptocurrency markets, increasing access to financial services while also exposing individuals to higher levels of financial fraud. Most research treats fraud vulnerability as a single outcome, without distinguishing between financial loss and the ability to recognize scams. This study examines how financial literacy shapes fraud vulnerability through its effects on fraud victimization and scam awareness, highlighting its dual role in reducing financial losses and improving scam recognition. Fraud vulnerability is therefore analyzed across two distinct dimensions: realized financial loss and scam awareness.

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  Turn out, Having Latinx Faculty Doesn't Mean the School Sucks: The Faux Relationship Between Latinx Saturation Rate and Institutional Prestige

  Julianne Pena

  • 25% or more full time students that are of Latinx decent (U.S. Department of Education) • Since 1992, enrollment and attendance of students increased (Vela & Gutierrez, 2017) • Latinx students more likely to enroll in HSIs over non HSIs (Vargas et al., 2019) • Latinx faculty to Latinx students 146:1, White faculty to White students 10:1 (Vargas et al., 2019) • Overrepresentation of White faculty and Underrepresentation of Latinx faculty (Robertson, 2023) • Diverse faculty is impactful (Contreras, 2017; Dayton et al., 2004; Turner & Gonzales, 2014) Purpose: The purpose of this topic is to bring awareness to Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), the misconceptions that come with prestige, and illustrating how students learn better through having a diverse faculty (Contreras, 2017; Dayton et al., 2004). Hypothesis: If university administrators are correct in their assessment of Latinx faculty as less valued, we would expect to see a negative statistical relationship between Latinx saturation rate and institutional prestige.

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  MaddenLite

  Sergio Pena

  Sports simulations often rely on opaque, proprietary algorithms (like EA's Madden NFL). MaddenLite bridges the gap between sports analytics and interactive gaming by utilizing historical NFL Play-by-Play (PBP) data to drive a transparent, mathematically accurate simulation engine. The goal was to create a lightweight, UI-driven desktop application where users can simulate cross-era matchups (e.g., 2007 Patriots vs. 2025 Chiefs), manipulate rosters, and simulate entire seasons complete with official NFL tiebreaker protocols.

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  Teeth That Tell Time: Elemental Analysis from Shark Teeth

  Gisele-Elizabeth Perez

  Sharks (Chondrichthyes) have hunted in the oceans for over 400 million years, their teeth leaving history behind, constantly becoming a part of the fossilization process (Worm et al. 2013). Their survival throughout 5 major extinctions is due to their ability to adapt easily with slow metabolism, a wide range of diet, and an efficient physiology. Shark teeth are vital to the hunting and consumption of their prey, making it a point for scientists to study them. Their tooth minerals contain fluorapatite in their enameloid, and dentin in the “root” of the tooth, with extinct species containing dentin and hydroxyapatite in more recent shark species (Lübke et al. 2015). As environmental changes occur, teeth analysis can become prominent in learning how prehistoric and modern shark species differ in their environments. This geochemical elemental analysis will examine the trace element chemistry of 127 shark teeth from geologic eras and geographic locations. The non-destructive analytical technique uses a portable Niton X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzer.

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  Research Proposal: Enhancing or Replacing? A Qualitative Study of AI's Impact on Coaching Strategy and Team Dynamics

  Mariana Perez Romero

  Since early 2020’s, artificial intelligence has become widely accessible and increasingly adapt in everyday life. In sports, AI now plays a major role in performance analysis, training strategies, and real time decision-making. While these tools offer significant advantages, they also reshape how athletes and coaches communicate, interpret information, and build relationships. Sport is a space for relationships: communication between coaches and athletes, trust within the team, shared decision-making, and bonds that are built through experience. It is important to understand how AI is influencing these human dynamics. This study will explore how AI influences communication and interpersonal dynamics in sports, focusing on how athletes and coaches interpret and adapt to these tools in their daily practice

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  "I NEED HELP!": Can ashwagandha reduce inflammation-driven oxidative stress without inducing cytotoxicity in macrophages?

  Caitlyn Pinaga

  Ashwagandha has been shown to reduce inflammation in humans by lowering pro-inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress markers, helping regulate immune responses. It is commonly used to support conditions linked to chronic inflammation, such as stress-related disorders, arthritis, and metabolic imbalance. THP-1 macrophages are a part of the body's immune response to inflammation. While they produce a lot of different responses to inflammation, one of them is the production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is established to be a powerful antioxidant and is used as a positive control. My study aims to understand how ashwagandha, a popular supplement, affects the production of ROS in macrophages during an inflammation response.

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  Analyzing the Effect of Melatonin on B Cells' Expression of CD36

  Caitlyn Pinaga, Gabriella Galdeano, Nayi Gonzalez, and Emma Welsch

  • B cells specifically target pathogens and proliferate to make a plasma cell and secrete antibodies when stimulated. They use glucose as a main energy source but can also use fatty acids. • CD36 is a glycoprotein involved in the transportation and metabolism of fatty acids. • B cells express CD36 in unusually high levels in autoimmune patients. It is unknown as to how this occurs. • Melatonin is a hormone produced in the pineal gland, commonly known for its function in regulating the circadian rhythm. • Melatonin is also known as a master cell regulator and is believed to regulate almost all cell functions including the movement of energy to and from storage and its role in activating the immune system. The effects of melatonin on CD36 expression in B cells is still untested.

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  Does shape matter?: How salamander head morphology shifts based on environment

  Caitlyn Pinaga, Naomi Ramirez, and Sonia Cerrillo

  Groundwater salamanders of the genus Eurycea represent a diverse group of amphibians inhabiting the aquifer systems of central Texas, where both surface-dwelling and fully subterranean species coexist. Subterranean habitats impose extreme selective pressures, including complete darkness, limited nutrient availability, and stable environmental conditions, which drive convergent morphological traits such as eye reduction or loss, decreased pigmentation, and elongation of appendages. A key evolutionary pattern seen in these systems is sensory compensation, in which the reduction of one sensory modality, in this case vision, is accompanied by the enhancement of others. In aquatic salamanders, this often involves expansion of the lateral line system, a mechanosensory network that detects water movement through specialized structures known as neuromasts, allowing organisms to better navigate and interact with their environment in the absence of light. In this study, four species: Eurycea latitans, Eurycea sosorum, Eurycea sp. 4, and Eurycea wallacei, were selected to represent variation along the surface-to-subterranean spectrum. E. sosorum, a primarily surface-associated species, retains well-developed eyes, whereas E. latitans exhibits intermediate characteristics. In contrast, E. sp. 4 and E. wallacei display more extreme cave-adapted traits, including reduced or vestigial visual systems.

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  Obesity in the Rio Grande Valley: Applying an Evidence-Based Public Health Approach

  Erika Pineda-Horta

  What structural and social determinants drive elevated adult obesity rates in the Rio Grande Valley, and what evidence-based interventions can reduce adult obesity prevalence in Hidalgo County by 5% by 2030?

  Objective: This study applies an EBPH framework to (1) characterize the burden and structural determinants of adult obesity in the RGV, and (2) propose a culturally responsive, evidence-based intervention targeting adults aged 18+ in Hidalgo County.

  Adult obesity is clinically defined as a Body Mass Index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m² in adults aged 18 and older (CDC, 2022). It is a chronic, multifactorial non-communicable disease shaped by structural, social, and behavioral determinants.

  Population: Adults 18+ in Hidalgo County, TX. Future research will extend to family- and childhood-focused interventions to interrupt the intergenerational cycle of obesity (see Conclusions).

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  Trust in the Supreme Court

  Mia Isabella Ramirez

  The central research question asks: What factors influence individuals' approval or disapproval of the way the Supreme Court is handling its job?

  - Gender
  - Education
  - Political Party

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  FishEasy

  Jake Ryan Rankin

  The purpose of FishEasy is to create an all-in-one fishing application that supports both beginner and experienced anglers through education, recommendations, and data tracking. Many new anglers struggle with understanding gear, knots, bait, and locations, while existing tools often limit access through paid features. FishEasy addresses these gaps by providing:

  • Educational Tutorials for knots, rigs, and beginner guidance • Smart Recommendations based on location, species, and conditions • Catch Logging & Analytics to track performance • Regulation Awareness for legal fishing practices
  
  
  Overall, FishEasy aims to make fishing more accessible, efficient, and easy to learn for all users.

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  "Leaf it to the Trees": Assessing the Cooling Effects of Tree Canopy on Campus Microclimates

  Andrea Sophia Realyvasquez

  Urban heat island (UHI) effects are becoming increasingly common worldwide, with lived experiences and media coverage highlighting the negative consequences of urban development for humans and the environment. Urbanization, like many other aspects of society, should not remain stagnant and outside the scope of innovation. Understanding the interplay between urban morphology and temperature distributions is crucial in informing effective policy development (AbbegCoproski et al. 2024). tion to a political approach to reducing surface temperatures, there is the social aspect of difficulty in evading UHI in microclimates. University campuses are among the many areas that struggle to overcome old infrastructure and move towards more sustainable built environments (Veblen 2024 Feb 6). There are equally difficult but plausible solutions that college and university campuses can implement to improve UHI mitigation, given their access to a microclimate status. Incorporating real-world benefits from scientific findings is important when presenting to not only groups like a university board, but also to those that have a broader reach, like government officials. To investigate how the St. Mary’s University campus is influenced by UHI effects, a temperature survey was conducted to observe the changes in the microclimates across campus by observing ground and air temperatures. It is believed that places across campus with a higher tree density would have a more noticeable difference in cooler air temperatures due to the shade they provide on nearby walkways. It is hypothesized that surface temperatures would be significantly higher in areas with partial shade and little to no shade.

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  Evaluation of prosthetic and orthotic technologies using AI technology

  Iris Reyna, Samerial Brown, Gary Guerra, and Ed Khu

  Individuals with lower limb prosthetics have amputations and abnormal limb motions, which poses a high risk of injury when doing everyday activities. In this field, evaluation of individuals' prosthetics are done through biomechanical analysis and gait analysis. This analysis is used to study human movement and evaluate the mobility and quality of life of amputee patients as well as determining the modifications, positioning, and alignment needed to ensure stability with prosthetic and orthotic technologies (Kumar & Bhowmik, 2024). Trunk flexion has importance to the study because of its impact on lower limb kinetics, kinematics, the increase of ground reaction forces, stride parameters and joint movements. Trunk acceleration shows the functional mobility of an individual during assessment, the higher the acceleration the faster the trunk (Warrener, et al., 2021).

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  Thomas Frost: Slave Catcher?

  Charles Ryan Ricketts

  Thomas C Frost, founder of Frost Bank, has long been regarded as a well-spoken individual whose legacy has caused exponential growth in the San Antonio Area. However, Frost’s legacy has deep roots within the Texas branch of the Confederacy and even less known a key enforcer of slavery. He was a Ranger thru and thru but the type of ranger he was is terrifying.

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  A.I.R.E. - AI-Assisted Reverse Engineering

  Laurene Robinson

  Reverse engineering plays a vital role in cybersecurity by helping analysts examine unknown binaries, investigate malware, identify vulnerabilities, and better protect sensitive systems. However, once a program is compiled and stripped, the meaningful names that describe its behavior are lost, leaving behind generic function labels like FUN_00401a30. Analysts must then manually interpret decompiled code, trace call chains, and infer program behavior function by function, which is slow and mentally demanding on large binaries. To address this challenge, this project introduces A.I.R.E., a local Ghidra extension that extracts contextual evidence from stripped functions and uses a locally hosted language model to generate confidence-aware naming suggestions while keeping the analyst in control