Highlights from the 2025 LPC Symposium

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Pictured above: Students, faculty, and guests attending the symposium's closing ceremony, where awards were handed out.

The LPC Honors Symposium is an annual event where our very own students present their Honors research projects through poster and oral presentations.

Thursday, April 24, 2025, friends, family, and industry professionals gathered to watch students’ oral presentations, browse the research poster gallery, and enjoy light snacks from our charcuterie table! This year, 26 LPC students presented their honors-level research. The best presentations were determined by panelists and audience voters, depending on the award.

List of presenters

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Link to program PDF HERE

Session I Presentations (3:15-3:50 pm)

Room 1004
Mia Wierzba, Mentors: Irena Keller & Robin Roy // Expanding on understanding of how women experience ADHD and how
their lifestyles impacted their experience.
Rifa Sipai, Mentor Robin Roy // How cultural stigmas in India impact mental health help-seeking & suicide rates.
Andre Valle and Brittany Robles-Camacho, Mentor Irena Keller // Testing the validity of the Hispanic Paradox in the cultural context of the Bay Area.

Room 1006
Sidhant Parashar, Mentor Howard Blumenfeld // Applied calculus-based derivations of market factors to identify potential
trades in Bitcoin markets.
Rohit Kancharla, Mentor Amitesh Maiti // Elucidate Blockchain’s transparent, decentralized, and secure operations through elementary calculus.
Anatoly Tsigelnik, Mentor Reena Singh // Application of the "six degrees of separation" theory.

Room 1012
Cheryl Cheung, Mentor Renu Sarin // Evaluating the usability of Avogadro and PyMol for beginner level chemistry students.
Shaan Singh, Mentor Alina Nguyen
// An investigation of how the regeneration of planarians is affected by exposure to tea compounds.
Crystal Zhu, Mentor Marco Atzori // Contextualizing modern medicine: historical analysis of Renaissance and 19th-century medical imagery.

Room 1060
Megan Gilmour, Mentor Daniel Cearley // Respecting the Dead, Serving the Living: Toward a Unified Code of Ethics in Forensic Anthropology.
Amisha Channa, Mentor Monica Silveira // My research aims to draw a critical focus onto the flawed prison system
and the need for reform.
Wen Zeng, Mentor Robin Roy (Psychology) // Examining the effect of visual stimulus on hedonic hunger.

Session II Presentations (4:00-4:50 pm)

Room 1004
Kiran Waraich, Mentors Sheena Turner-August and Robin Roy // Navigating Intersectional Identities' Role in Community College Students Pursuing Higher Education.
Cassandra Smith, Mentor Irena Keller // An experimental survey to study how social media can use psychology to influence buying behavior.
Grant Yong, Mentor Irena Keller // The Impact of Music Genre on Exam Stress and Self-Perceived
Performance.

Room 1006
Raza Ali, Mentor Dana Nakase // Assessing the impact of biodegradable microplastic concentration on broccoli seed germination.
Dasha Orel, Mentors Richard Hertz and Joanna Jen // A Demand for Effective Environmental Self-Regulation at Lawrence Livermore National Labs.
Ella Herndon, Mentor Jeremiah Bodnar // Utilizing ideas about efficiency, decoration, and waste from modernism in sustainable architecture.

Room 1012
Daniel Zhang and Aisha Gupta, Mentor Eric Harpell // We develop a Habitability Transit Score using mathematical modeling and nonlinear transformations.
Pavan Siddharth Kosuru, Mentor Caterina Pentcheva // Effects of wind & coal power plants on astronomical visibility analyzed
using light pollution maps.
Tem Petrenko, Mentor Michael Peterson // Seeing Through the Math: Exploring Edge Detection and Image Filters with Linear Algebra.

Room 1060
Victoria Wang, Mentor Irena Keller // Basic psychological units (Jungian function-attitudes) are mapped and
analyzed according to the Beebe model.
Mattéa Gutierrez, Mentor Meghan Swanson // How Asian American filmmakers depict matriarchal authority, filial piety, and generational trauma.
Ishmeet Dhillon, Mentor Felipe Ponce // Exploring the underrepresented history of Punjabi Sikhs in America.