Exhibits of Excellence

Each fall, select graduate students present their research to the Rackham community at Exhibits of Excellence. At our 2025 event, eight students engaged in a poster presentation on their research, covering a broad range of topics, from the algebraic rules of frieze patterns to literacy-building skills for bilingual children. 

In this short Q&A, student presenters were asked to describe their research using accessible, everyday language, and to talk about the impact that donor support has had on their graduate school experience, to give the Rackham community a glimpse into their work.

Master’s Student, Educational Studies

My Work

When I asked people to define joy, no one gave me a textbook answer. They spoke about being free, seen, playful, alive. That’s where I begin—because joy is not just a feeling, it is what makes us feel fully human. In classrooms, joy transforms learning into a liberatory experience—safe, meaningful, and sustainable.

But joy is not equally distributed. In India, many marginalized students—Dalit, Muslim, tribal, queer—are stripped of joy in spaces that should nurture them. I’ve heard children called “too loud,” “too different,” “in need of remediation.” When your teacher doesn’t look like you, your language is corrected instead of welcomed, your history erased from textbooks, and your questions labeled disruptive—you learn early that school was not built for your joy.

As bell hooks reminds us, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility.” That truth led me to wonder: what if we designed classrooms with joy at the center? From this wondering, I created the Pedagogy of Joy—a teacher-training curriculum that helps educators unlearn oppressive practices and build classrooms rooted in belonging, healing, and transformation. It is designed for educators, particularly in India but transferable across contexts globally, who are ready to interrogate their own positionality and create spaces where every student can thrive.

This work is the first of its kind in India. Too often, research and policy focus only on trauma. My work reframes joy as central to transformative learning and as a political and pedagogical act of resistance—one that allows students to thrive.

Support Impact

Receiving a scholarship award has been transformative for my work—not just in material terms, also in the affirmation it provides. It gave me the confidence to believe that my research, focused on centering joy for marginalized students in Indian classrooms, matters. It validated a vision that had long felt risky, because this work has never been done before.

This award has allowed me to dedicate time and energy to designing and refining the Pedagogy of Joy curriculum, grounding it in justice-centered practices and the lived experiences of marginalized students, without the constant worry of managing tuition and loans. It has also given me space to connect with educators, mentors, and peers, and to explore how this work can grow into a sustainable framework.

I am excited to use this opportunity to connect with like-minded people who believe in the purpose and potential of transformative education. This support fuels hope, encourages reflection, and strengthens my conviction that joy can be a radical and necessary part of learning. I also hope to carry this research forward into other contexts globally, building solidarity and sharing frameworks that celebrate joy, affirmation, and justice for students everywhere.

Ph.D. Candidate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

My Work

My research focuses on comparing the social, historical, and ecological impacts of the coquí frog, a species found in Puerto Rico and Hawaii. 

Support Impact

Donor support has allowed me to be able to pursue a doctorate without having to pay tuition that would put me into debt. Additionally, it has provided me with the opportunity to take fellowship semesters, during which I do not have to teach and can focus on my research. This funding also secures my own stipend, which helps me maintain my livelihood without any significant financial strain. This has helped my degree progress significantly.

Ph.D. Candidate, Biomedical Engineering

My Work

My research involves using computational modeling and simulations to understand the effects of electrical stimulation on neurons to produce pain relief. We do this by using multiphysics models to calculate the potential distribution and pair them with neuron models of sensory fibers to get the neural response during stimulation. 

Support Impact

Donor support throughout my studies speaks volumes of my hard work. To me, it means there are people out there that believe in me and my skillset. And so whenever I go through hard research days, I remember the people who have helped me get to where I am today. Whether it is through lessening the financial burden or physical advice and mentoring, I consider any kind of help highly valuable and use it as motivation to push the boundaries of science.

Ph.D. Candidate, Musicology

My Work

Music has a unique set of powers that we utilize every day. We can use it to cheer us up if we’re feeling down, or to distract us, or even to embrace the act of feeling down itself. When we listen to or play music, we’re also engaging in a feedback loop of identity. Not only do we hear and play music that feels most representative of us, but we also do it in culturally specific ways that we aren’t always aware of. We listen to music in our cars loud enough for us to feel the bass and drown out the world; play instruments in the comfort of our bedrooms, relying on headphones to safeguard our art for ourselves; and we blast old family favorites from our speakers in the backyard when we’re having people over to celebrate holidays. The louder one plays music, however, the more likely it is that the outside world can hear what that person listens to, how they listen to it, and use that information to make assumptions about that person. I argue that loudness can be a tool for establishing and reaffirming identity, taking advantage of the outside world’s assumptions and turning them on their head to let the music speak for us when, depending on certain sociopolitical climates, we cannot speak for ourselves directly.

Support Impact

Without donor support, I would struggle in ways I believe might prevent me from pursuing this work I feel is most important. Grad school is already difficult enough, and donors help our community do the best work it knows it can do. One of the great things I’ve experienced in my time here at Michigan is the culture of paying things forward. Kindness feels engrained in this community’s culture, as is the belief in the work the people around you do. And at a moment where that work seems at risk, donor help is not only greatly appreciated but essential to Michigan’s goal of making the world a better place.

Ph.D. Student, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering

My Work

I conduct research on bluff bodies, like cylinders or spheres. Bluff bodies are objects where the flow separates, causing significant turbulence in the wake (as opposed to a streamlined body, like a wing).

My current work focuses on the vortex-induced vibrations of spheres. Vortex-induced vibrations occur when a flow passes an object, like a sphere, generating a wake that matches the natural frequency of the object, causing resonance like a musical instrument. Most research has gone into mitigating the vibrations of 2D objects, as they can cause damage to systems like chimneys, marine risers, or bridge pylons. However, spheres exhibit a similar response, and if a system is undergoing regular vibration, could that be used to harness energy? Given the relative lack of knowledge around spheres, my research details how arrays of spheres may affect their vibration.

Another interesting facet of bluff bodies is that while the turbulent wake causes significant drag, this can be reduced by delaying when the turbulent wake forms. By adding dimples to a sphere, like a golf ball, the wake can be reduced. If we can control the depth of these dimples using a morphable skin, the wake can be controlled to reduce drag and produce lift. This has huge promise for both enhancing energy applications or controlling underwater vehicles without the need for wings or rudders, which cause additional drag.

Support Impact

I began my academic journey believing I would be working in industry immediately after my bachelor’s. However, due to support from Rackham donors, I could fully commit to working with an amazing new faculty and lab team. Despite the normal struggles of a Ph.D. student in my first year, I have continued to fall in love with the process of experimental research and understanding of physical phenomena. Because of receiving this support, I have the opportunity to explore the depth of fulfillment that working in a research setting around other incredible people offers.

Ph.D. Student, Social Work

My Work

I study how family, work, and social relationships shape people’s health and well-being as they age. My research looks at questions like why women and men experience retirement differently, or how early life experiences such as mental health challenges can affect later economic security. By using long-term data that follow people across their lives, I try to understand how inequality builds up over time and how we can design policies that support healthier and more secure aging.

Support Impact

150 years from now, I believe the study of population health and inequality will remain central to understanding human well-being. With advances in data and technology, researchers may be able to follow people’s life experiences even more closely and design policies that are more responsive to diverse needs. My hope is that future scholarship will continue to address the ways that social and economic inequality shape health across the life course, and that research will contribute to building a society where people can age with dignity and security.

Ph.D. Candidate, Psychology and Education

My Work

My research examines how young bilingual children, particularly those growing up with Spanish as a heritage language, develop language and literacy skills in both Spanish and English. I focus on preschool- and elementary-aged learners, with much of my work dedicated to understanding reading comprehension. Specifically, I study how cognitive skills (such as vocabulary and grammar) and environmental experiences (like the language children hear and use at home, as well as their access to books and reading activities) influence their ability to comprehend texts. I am especially interested in how skills and knowledge in one language influence learning in the other, a two-way process known as cross-linguistic influences. An important part of my work focuses exclusively on Spanish language and literacy development. Using longitudinal methods, I follow Spanish heritage learners in Southeast Michigan over time to gain a deeper understanding of how their skills develop in a community where English is the dominant language. Finally, I collaborate on research projects related to understanding language representations in the bilingual brain during early childhood.

Support Impact

Rackham has been an invaluable source of support throughout my Ph.D. program, offering both essential financial assistance and diverse professional development opportunities. The financial support I received through Rackham’s pre-candidacy and candidacy research grants was crucial in making my research possible, while the summer funding provided by Rackham has been fundamental for my economic stability during my time here, especially significant to me as an international student. Professionally, Rackham gave me access to outstanding learning experiences, such as the ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) summer program courses in statistics and research methods, which strengthened my methodological skills. Additionally, their wide range of professional development events, including workshops on integrating artificial intelligence into teaching and teaching-focused seminars, has greatly contributed to my growth as a scholar and educator.

Ph.D. Candidate, Algebraic Combinatorics

My Work

I study collections of numbers called frieze patterns that follow special algebraic rules. Sometimes the numbers in a frieze pattern represent geometric data, and we can use the frieze to solve geometric problems. I have developed a new type of frieze pattern that represents the measurement data for a polygon on the surface of a sphere. My work allows for swift and simple algebraic computation of the measurements in the polygon.

Support Impact

Doing math research requires long uninterrupted blocks of time to sit and think deeply, to test examples, to write computer programs, and to carefully write up results. The financial support I’ve received has meant I don’t need to take on extra side jobs that break up my time. With this support, I’ve been able to move my research forward, start new collaborations, and write up my work.

Learn more about ways to support Rackham master’s and doctoral students.