TUFTS’
TOP 10 SUMMER SCHOLARS
“WHAT IS YOUR OBSESSION?” THE SUMMER SCHOLARS PROGRAM ASKS, AND STUDENTS RESPOND—PROPOSING UNIQUE AND AMBITIOUS TOPICS, WHICH THEY EXPLORE WITH THE GUIDANCE OF A FACULTY MENTOR OVER A SUMMER OF FULLY-FUNDED RESEARCH. HERE ARE TEN OF OUR FAVORITE PROJECTS. The Meanings of Different Birds in Art and Science: Using Film to Understand D’Arcy Thompson’s A Glossary of Greek Birds in Today’s World Rainie Toll ’19 Major: American Studies
Alternative Histories and the Pictographic Alphabet Serena August ’19 BFA in Interdisciplinary Art
Diegetic Presence in Cinematic Virtual Reality Justine Chung ’20 Major: Philosophy Justine Chung’s project examines how audiovisual elements shape the viewer’s experience in contemporary 360-degree virtual reality media. Interested in the cues that promote a sense of “presence” in a fictional space, she sought out one of her past film professors, Dr. Malcolm Turvey, to supplement her studies of telling a narrative through media art. “It’s very cool to join a community of peer researchers, all of us pursuing our own questions,” Justine adds. “And of course, the research grant is highly clutch.”
Performance Analysis of Key Facial Recognition Algorithms Kevin Naranjo ’20 Major: Electrical Engineering
Serena August’s research required her to don “the aesthetic methods of an archaeologist in order to examine modern-day phenomena.” Serena, who has always held interests in history and multidisciplinary art, recalls her SMFA visual and critical studies professors urging her to consider the whys. Why do certain artifacts exist, why did they come to be, and what purpose did they serve? “I began to ask myself the same questions,” Serena says. “What does a PlayStation mean in the context of world history? Will the lower-middle-class gems of my youth be preserved?” Joining forces with a printmaking faculty mentor, Peter Scott, she set off to find out. “Even the most dismal material contains historical, sociological, and artistic context,” Serena adds with a smile. “I doubt I will ever be able to say I am finished researching.”
Kevin Naranjo honed in on facial recognition algorithms. “When looking through the current algorithms I noticed most focused only on recognizing colored or grayscale images of people’s faces. So I decided to look into how these algorithms worked with alternative image types such as infrared, night vision, sketches, and 3D images,” he explains. When he first became interested in research he turned to a professor, who pointed him towards Dr. Karen Panetta, whom Kevin contacted and within a year was working alongside in her lab. In sum, he says, “It was a refreshing change of pace from the rest of my academic career and definitely a summer well spent.”
Scaldin’ Malden: A Red Hot Opportunity for Tufts University Isaac Mudge ’19 Major: Civil Engineering
Examining the Experiences of Young Girls in STEM Education Elizabeth Moison ’20 Major: Sociology
Representing Disease: How Hep C and HIV/AIDS Acquired a Political Identity Lucia Francese ’19 Majors: Sociology and Political Science
Following a rowing event, Isaac Mudge encountered a public interest meeting at the crew team boathouse on the Malden River and was galvanized to aid their green redevelopment initiatives however possible. “It’s a really easy thing to do in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department,” he explains. His mentor, Professor Julian Agyeman, was on sabbatical in Montreal at the time but still willing and able to lend his expertise, even remotely. The research focused on a region around the river just north of Boston and sought to find resources within Tufts that could be put to work behind five specific projects: a railway-to-pedestrian bridge, a floating treatment wetland, a water taxi business proposal, a formal crew team partnership, and a category of educational programming. Isaac will be conducting a research project this upcoming year revolving around the floating treatment wetland through a Tufts master’s program.
Collecting data from girls in grades 3–6 in workshops hosted by the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, Elizabeth Moison sought to understand young girls’ take on gender dynamics in the classroom. During an elementary engineering class she was teaching, she noticed boys gravitated towards technology they knew and subsequently commandeered others’ work, while girls tended to retreat, not vying for equal authority even when they had initiated the project. While the gendering of undergraduate engineering is well documented, little had been investigated with children, so sociology and education student Elizabeth paired up with a mentor in mechanical engineering, Dr. Kristen Wendell, to broach the question. “Pushing myself to admit when I didn’t know something really opened a door for her to support me and for us to connect,” she admits. “This project was what sparked my goal to go on to graduate school and study education and educational policy.”
Lucia Francese investigated how people with Hepatitis C (HCV) and people with AIDS (PWA) developed a political identity in the United Kingdom and to what extent they realized their potential to become political actors. Lucia had never even heard of medical sociology until becoming a research assistant for Professor Rosemary Taylor her sophomore year, and immediately her interest was piqued by the role the political sphere plays in shaping the identity of diseases. “We brainstormed how I could merge my interest in political science, my minor, and my interest in disease identity,” Lucia explains. “The political identity of people with Hepatitis C has been influenced by social movements, portrayal in newspapers, and how the government has addressed their concerns. This has reminded me to never be satisfied when I find one possible explanation for a hypothesis and to always search for more.”
Rainie Toll created a series of films to make Scottish academic D’Arcy Thompson’s A Glossary of Greek Birds accessible to the public. A Glossary references birds from Greek mythology, but because they are named in Ancient Greek, their modern avian correlates remain largely unknown. Rainie, along with classics professor Marie-Claire Beaulieu and film professor Jennifer Burton, traveled to Thompson’s native Scotland to investigate and begin production. “We flew into Edinburgh, which looks like illustrations in a fairytale, and stayed in St. Andrews, which is practically made out of stone. I worked on weekends and thought about the project in the car and on runs because it was so magnetic.”
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