Penn Grad Talks 2024 Finalists

Professional Master's Presentations

Dinisha Mehta, Organizational Dynamics

The Balloon Theory: Not all Kinds of “Bubbles” Are Restrictive!

The perspective delves into the transformative power of an individual that revolves around the ‘The Balloon Theory of Resilience’. Drawing inspiration from cognitive-behavioral, strength-based coaching and the principles of positive psychology; the speaker explores how altering thought processes can lead to a happier and more resilient life. The concept begins by dissecting common thinking traps that people fall into during challenging situations, and emphasizes the importance of resilience in bouncing back from setbacks. The ‘Balloon’ in this concept represents a ‘mental bubble’, where an individual’s focus is highly on the positive attributes centered around oneself, such as high self-esteem, optimism, and mindfulness. This metaphor illustrates how positivity can soar to great heights but is vulnerable to external factors such as negative thoughts and self-doubt. With supporting literature, the concept also proves that individuals with a thicker protective layer of resilience tend to be more successful in their careers. The philosophy incorporates elements of Appreciative Inquiry as an approach by managers as coaches, emphasizing the importance of carrying forward the best parts of oneself. The audience is invited to contemplate the impact of this coaching philosophy from an organizational behavior perspective, and how mindset-shift can lead to a professionally successful life.

Antonia Offen, Environmental Studies

Shoring Up against Hurricanes: Water Utility Resilience in Puerto Rico

Drinking water utility systems in Puerto Rico are frequently devastated by the hurricanes which drench the Caribbean island every year. As climate change worsens these storms, several measures have been proposed to improve water utility resiliency. Yet six years after the Category 4 Hurricane Maria swept the island, little progress has been completed. Only very recently has the primary water utility system on the island started construction on resilient repairs to previous hurricane damages, such as installing electronic monitoring systems, expanding storage tanks for cleaned water, and purchasing backup generators. However, there are additional issues which remain unaddressed. 3% of Puerto Rican residents are connected to community-run water utilities, which are frequently out of compliance with EPA water quality standards and therefore disqualified from federal aid. These systems are in desperate need of assistance but find themselves at an unsolvable impasse. Additionally, both the small community and primary water utility systems struggle to maintain employees. Skilled workers must be considered a part of resiliency measures for water utilities in our changing world. Without consistent attention to these issues, Puerto Rico will continue to suffer loss of water services after hurricanes.

Andrés Oliveros González, Behavioral and Decision Sciences

Three Stories every Student Needs to Tell

We often assume that good ideas and exceptional talent will naturally rise to the surface and receive recognition, but both history and our personal experiences show that this is not always the case. So, how can we enhance our chances of success? One approach is to harness the art of oral storytelling in two pivotal and recurring scenarios: networking and pitching ideas. Insights from evolutionary psychology, neurobiology, and cognitive science highlight that the brain's primary function isn't merely to think, but to ensure our survival. These insights should urge us to change how we communicate with others. We tend to rely only on small talk, data and PowerPoint slides. In doing so we miss the context, warmth and clarity storytelling brings. Twelve years ago, I left corporate law career to help students, professionals, and entrepreneurs master the skill of winning others over through storytelling. In 2022, I came to Penn to study the Masters of Behavioral and Decision Sciences to deepen my understanding of the science behind influence and storytelling. In this Penn Grad Talk, I'll share why stories matter and how to tell five types of stories to build credibility, share insights and move to action. This talk is tailored for students aspiring to enter the job market, advance in their careers, or amplify their impact.

Lixian Xie, Organizational Dynamics

Using AI-Driven Coach to Enhance Well-Being among the Global Chinese Population

According to research, 300 million Chinese people are struggling with mental health challenges, including depression, anxiety, and sleep problems. 20%of Chinese International Students in the United States are suffering from various emotional challenges. However, China has a severe shortage of mental health resources compared with Western countries. Addressing this, my initiative aims to enhance the mental well-being of the global Chinese population, leveraging cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, especially large language models (LLMs). To achieve this, I explored the various abilities of LLMs and their transformative applications in coaching and psychology. Moreover, I examined the willingness to use AI-driven coaching among Chinese international students at the University of Pennsylvania. Findings show that 71.4% of students are willing to engage with AI coaching to support their mental health and personal development. I proposed a novel knowledge-based framework for AI-driven coaching, incorporating various psychological theories and coaching models. Building on this, I developed an AI coach, 'Hey Sherry, to provide personalized coaching services, enhancing the accessibility, affordability, and scalability of mental health services. It promises to significantly contribute to human well-being and personal development of a large population, demonstrating the transformative impact of LLMs in global well-being interventions.

Hang Zhao, Environmental Studies

The Role of Carbon Management in Reaching United States' Climate Neutrality Goal

Since the Paris agreement, nations globally have committed to climate targets, aiming for carbon neutral in the next three or four decades. The United States, currently the world's largest economy and a major carbon emitter, has set an ambitious goal to achieve a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Efforts towards this goal include renewable and nuclear energy, hydrogen technology, replacing traditional fossil fuels across various industries. A key aspect of this transition is carbon management, including methods for carbon capturing, removing, transporting, storing, and reusing from high-emission sectors, also commonly referred to as Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS). This is particularly promising in the US, given its vast land and sufficient suitable geologic form for carbon storage. However, there are still questions remained unclear, such as whether it is cost-effective to implement the required infrastructure and engineering, safety and risks concerns on carbon transportation and underground storage, implications on future land use development and nearby communities, and also the problem of environmental justice. This talk will explore carbon management, assess its feasibility, and discuss its prospects for the audience.

Humanities Presentations

Maithili Appalwar, International Studies, The Lauder Institute

Recovering Pioneers: The Overlooked Feminist Thought Leaders of India’s Satyashodhak Samaj

Jyotirao Phule’s 19th century Satyashodhak Samaj energized western India through an intersectional program against caste and gender barriers. However, the formidable activism and intellectual contributions by Satyashodhak women remain minimized, framing Phule as a lone egalitarian maverick. This presentation spotlights his co-founder, and wife, Savitribai and three other female leaders - Fatima Sheikh, Tarabai Shinde and child prodigy, Muktabai. Discourse analysis of their Marathi-language tracts and poetry unveils sophisticated theories condemning upper-caste Brahmanism and patriarchy decades before their time. Findings showcase each writer’s distinct outlook shaped by their specific identity-based marginalizations, cautioning against homogenizing “lower caste women’s” perspectives. For instance, Shinde’s caste advantages allow more abstract feminist critique versus Muktabai’s first hand experiences sparking radical urgency. This presentation ultimately upholds these overlooked thinkers’ rightful status as pioneers not just conveyors of social justice ideology, restoring women’s centrality in catalyzing Phule’s movement. Their writings’ intersectional framework and subversive ingenuity carry renewed relevance amidst enduring questions of representation and marginalization today; these works also prompt a reframing of the singular, Hindu-brahmanical underpinnings of Indian nationalism that govern contemporary political narrative.

Mathias Isiani, Africana Studies

“What Is a Church Built For?”: Gothic Architecture as British Imperialism in Eastern Nigeria

By focusing on the Gothic architecture used by most Christian missionaries in church buildings across Eastern Nigeria, this research reveals how such buildings covertly served British cultural (imperial) interest more than they did in the proselytization of the people into Christianity. I also argue that statements such as those from Bishop Charles Frederick Mackenzie to “install visible signs of civilization and use architecture as the permanent markers of the European and Christian way of life” should be considered as a critical pointer for the re-evaluation of church buildings not just in Eastern Nigeria, but across British colonial world. Drawing extensively from archival documents, newspapers, and missionary files, the research further explores the links between colonial architecture, architects, urbanity, and imperialism. Scholarship that explores Christian missionaries and their roles, impacts, and agency in Eastern Nigeria exists. In contributing to that scholarship, this research shifts from the traditional perception that equates Christian missionaries’ evangelism to only preaching and humanitarianism services but focuses on how we can reexamine the interplay and historical silences between Christianity, especially Anglican Church of England and Church buildings with gothic architecture as a tool for the furtherance of imperialism in Eastern Nigeria during colonial times.

Ameen Perumannil Sidhick, South Asia Studies

Islamic Legal Practices under Calicut’s non-Islamic Rule

By focusing on the early medieval port city of Calicut, on the western coast of South Asia, my presentation explores how Islamic legal institutions were legitimized and found patronage under non-Muslim states. Unlike studies of Islamic law and society in South Asia, which are characterized primarily by Muslim rule over a largely non-Muslim population, my study explores how a Mercantile and cosmopolitan port in the region offers a new framework to study how Islamic institutions found space outside Islamicate landscapes. The changing positionality Muslims of Malabar came to occupy during the period was reflected in the texts and literature they produced that legitimized living under non-Islamic rule and proclaiming Zamorin as the rightful rulers for whom Muslims should fight. By drawing a more nuanced social and theological understanding of the period and by underlining the Muslim communities of the region as a non-monolithic social group, the paper tries to challenge ideas of legal pluralism and Islamic law as community law. Calicut in the 16th century also offers a possibility to define the limitations of the Islamicate framework by giving primacy to how communities, believer, and agents of intellectual circulation of the period perceived their role in the Islamic world that they actively built.

Gwendalynn Roebke, Philosophy

Wound Righting through Communicative Re-Kinning and Imagination: Kinship as Intrinsic to Wellness, and the Role of Imagination in Efforts of Healing the “Hermeneutic Illness” Wrought by Colonial Rupture

Rawad Wehbe, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

All My Friends Are Dead: Time, Emotion, and Form in Early Islamic Poetry

We live in a time of illness. “Post” pandemic, “post” colonial, “post” modernity. All of these supposed posts, supposed pasts, fester in us. Who we are, or rather , who we ought to be, is a line of questioning kept outside of our reach. This questioning is cast as having long been addressed by that festering past. We are prescribed individualistic identities detached from place, people, language. It is in these restrictions of knowing ourselves, enforced by a divorce of human persons from meaningful relationships with land and non- human beings , that incubates a malady; a hermeneutic illness (HI). Colonial imposition introduces HI to undermine the ability of the colonized to be able to make sense of themselves in the world outside of colonial frameworks of knowing. The untranslatability of the colonized to themselves with only the colonizer’s language left to describe them, renders them ill. It is an illness of colonially enforced kinlessness, a calculated unwellness. We live in a time of unrelenting dreaming. For all the illness in this world, there is a dreaming, an imagining, that sutures the cuts made between kinship and wellness. There is a potential for wound righting. This potential, held in addressing HI, and in this addressal offering practices of re-kinning and wellness, comes in the form of knowledges of imagination . In imagination we come to re-know expansive kinship networks underlying our shared world, and how these networks bring wellness. The paper goes through 2 main projects: The first, a development of definitions for wellness and kinship and how these concepts in their Interconnectedness via capacity for communication are disrupted by an account I develop of colonialism’s contagion, HI. The second, an offering of a possible route for healing from HI via knowledges of imagination, which stands to help us create processes of re-kinning.

Natural Sciences Presentations

Ranadeb Ball, Chemistry

Take on Water Crisis and Nano-Filtration From a Molecular Perspective

With the rise of global ground water crisis, sustainable water filtration technologies are more important than ever. Thanks to state-of-art nanofiltration strategies by nanostructured materials and membranes, water desalination and wastewater management are some of the promising avenues towards solving this crisis. However, this effort is hindered by the lack of fundamental scientific understanding of the molecular interaction within the nanoconfinement, which strictly guide the large-scale molecular transport through the nanomaterials. Nanostructured membranes with angstrom scale pore size tunability, exhibit unique ion filtration properties with different concentration and identity of the salts dissolved in the aqueous solution. Using laser spectroscopy as a tool, I study these ion-water interactions within the membranes to explore fundamental guiding principles of water desalination with nanomaterials. With the rise of global ground water crisis, sustainable water filtration technologies are more important than ever. Thanks to state-of-art nanofiltration strategies by nanostructured materials and membranes, water desalination and wastewater management are some of the promising avenues towards solving this crisis. However, this effort is hindered by the lack of fundamental scientific understanding of the molecular interaction within the nanoconfinement, which strictly guide the large-scale molecular transport through the nanomaterials. Nanostructured membranes with angstrom scale pore size tunability, exhibit unique ion filtration properties with different concentration and identity of the salts dissolved in the aqueous solution. Using laser spectroscopy as a tool, I study these ion-water interactions within the membranes to explore fundamental guiding principles of water desalination with nanomaterials. Based on this study, I find that the ion transport not only depends on the charge or the size of the ions, that we expect intuitively; but also depends on their interactions with the membrane wall. Strong hydrophobic interactions with the wall, and weak hydrogen bonding interaction with the solvating water increase the resistance for the ions to transport. Such a fundamental insight on ion transport will lead us towards better nanostructure engineering, to eradicate the existing water crisis.

Steven Gassner, Physics and Astronomy

Doing Physics with Doodles

Math and physics sometimes have the reputation of being abstract and dull. For some people, their fondest memories of these classes involve doodling in the margins of their notebook, while they tune out whatever tedious calculation the teacher is writing on the board. But what if I told you that some of the most sophisticated calculations in theoretical physics can be boiled down to just a few little drawings of arrows and wiggles? In this talk, I will explain the key ideas of my research in quantum materials using Feynman diagrams, a tool invented by a particle physicist that turns complicated equations into simple drawings of particle collisions. Framed in this way, almost everything we see in everyday life can be explained in terms of electrons bouncing off particles of light. I will show this with an example from my research, where I describe how we might engineer an exotic type of superconductor by thinking about light bouncing off pairs of electrons. The take-home message is that we can learn a great deal about complicated systems by trying to explain them as simply as possible, and that the best ideas in theoretical physics are accessible to anyone who can doodle.

Daniel Gomes, Physics and Astronomy

Planet X: Can Gravity Solve a Mystery of the Deep Solar System?

Many people argue for the existence of a 9th planet in our solar system, so far away that our telescopes wouldn’t yet be able to see it. Besides searching for its light, there is an alternative approach to look for this planet: gravity. Mass attracts mass, so any massive far-away object would slightly pull other planets and asteroids in its direction, causing very small alterations to their orbits. If these disturbances were detected, we could infer the location of our hypothetical Planet X. There’s a catch–we need high precision measurements of the location of known planets and asteroids. Here is one way we have been working towards this: There’s a ground-based telescope called LSST, which has the world’s largest digital camera, and it is almost ready to survey the sky. In order to get the necessary precision in asteroid tracking, we would need to remove, in its images, the displacements caused by atmospheric turbulence. We developed a code that does this using reference stars from a space telescope. This space telescope can see only the brightest stars of an LSST image, but it has no atmospheric turbulence. We use these bright stars to calibrate the LSST image.

Sabina Maurer, Chemistry

Harnessing Nature’s Machinery: How We Can Use Microbes to Make Therapeutics

Over the last 4 billion years (almost the entirety of Earth’s existence), the smallest living organisms in our environment – microbes – have been waging constant war with their nearest neighbors. Their artillery in this battle? Not small arms, but small molecules. Because these molecules have evolved to disrupt biological systems, they are often repurposed for human use as antibiotics or chemotherapeutics. My research investigates the means of production of one class of these small molecules: aziridines. Aziridines are tiny, extremely reactive arrangements of atoms that imbue anticancer properties to their molecules by acting as molecular warheads. I wanted to know what microbial machinery, or enzyme, constructs these powerful aziridines, and if I could use those enzymes for eco-friendly ways to do chemistry. I used modern computational and biochemical techniques to find these enzymes and characterize them in the laboratory. I have discovered three and have optimized their activity on other “non-native” compounds demonstrating brand new chemical reactions. We are continuing to study these enzymes to make new aziridine-containing therapeutics. Microbes have the tools to create life-changing molecules, it’s up to us to find and use them.

Jessica Wojick, Biology

Pain in the Brain

Pain is an experience composed of multiple components, but the emotional dimension causes suffering in chronic pain. Though one in five people suffer from chronic pain, the neural mechanisms of the emotional suffering of pain remain unknown. Emotion is processed in part by the amygdala, a brain region recently implicated in pain. Here, we functionally and genetically characterize the pain neurons of the amygdala and their projections to other brain areas. We found that the amygdala pain neurons are important for acute and chronic pain behavior and are non-overlapping with neurons that respond to reward. Our genetic analysis of the amygdala found subpopulations of neurons that are responsive to pain and identified genes that are changed in chronic pain. Finally, we looked where the amygdala neurons project throughout the brain and discovered a pain hot spot in another emotional brain region—the nucleus accumbens. Interestingly, the amygdala sends pain information to the nucleus accumbens, including information coding light touch as painful in a chronic pain state. In all, we have discovered a neural circuit between the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens that is important to emotional pain and may be a prime target for new chronic pain treatments.

Social Sciences Presentations

Ian Anderson, International Studies, The Lauder Institute

Rural Rupees to Cashless Clicks: Microfinance's High-Tech Tale

Microfinance plays a critical role in providing low-income villages in India with financial services, enabling rural residents to sustain small businesses and, however slowly, advance their families’ economic status. Microfinance institutions are typically private, for-profit or non-profit organizations that give collateral-free small ticket size loans at the doorstep of the borrowers, often less than $1000, to people who otherwise have limited or no access to banking, lending, credit, insurance, and other such financial services. Apart from lending and credit services, microfinance institutions may also be involved in various development activities such as education building and health services. In India, microfinance has long been a means for small shop owners, farmers, and other individuals living below or near the poverty line to access funding. Looking at financial trends, in recent years, India as a society has begun moving towards digitalization of financial services, through initiatives such as India Stack and Aadhaar-based digital infrastructure. In the context of microfinance, digital services have been used as a tool for changing the status quo for both lenders and borrowers. Although digitalization of financial services does not come without its challenges, the recent increase in the use of digital tools and services in India has enabled microfinance institutions to promote greater financial inclusion for the rural Indian population as long as those challenges are addressed effectively.

Chelsea Cohen, Anthropology

Losing the Forest for the Seas: How Maritime Construction Changed the Landscape of Colonial North America

What can ships tell us about forests? A lot, actually. Since ships were made from trees and other plant materials through the 19th century, they hold the histories of the forests in which those trees grew. In colonial North America, timbering, including for ship and waterfront construction, was part of larger colonial regimes of extraction and land clearing. The vast forests of the American Atlantic, once cleared, opened up wide tracts of land for open-field cash-crop agriculture such as wheat and tobacco. The cleared trees didn’t just disappear, though. Instead, they were used as fuel and for construction. While stone and brick could substitute terrestrially, wood was critical for maritime and waterfront construction as it was both watertight and light enough to float. A direct relationship was thus built between agrarian hinterlands, colonial ports, and the forests between them. By looking at the wood from three ships found under an 18th-century wharf in Northern Virginia, researchers can see the development of this connection in real-time. This historical perspective offers important contemporary insights about what the landscape we encounter today looked like in the past, and how we can think responsively about our present and future interactions with these environments.

Joyce Kim, Sociology

A Moral Dilemma of “Selling Out”: Race, Class, and Career Considerations among Elite College Students

“What will you do after you graduate?” is a question that college students often wrestle with. Existing sociological research on occupational choice tends to focus on economic outcomes. Based on 62 in-depth interviews with Asian, Black, and White first-generation, low-income (FGLI), and middle-class students at an elite university, I argue that students’ career decisions comprise a moral dimension that varies based on the intersection of their racial and class backgrounds. Specifically, patterns broadly align with two categories: 1) limitable objections, or the varying levels of objection to certain high-prestige, high-paying careers based on inspired preferences or civic justifications, and 2) linked obligations to broader communities, such as ethnoracial groups or families. Paradoxically, some students use these evaluative logics to justify “selling out” in pursuit of these elite jobs, whereas others use these logics to reject them. While students across all racial and class backgrounds raised limitable objections, FGLI students and students of color tended to voice more linked obligations. Furthermore, Asian and Black FGLI students more often cited linked obligations in their career choices compared to their White FGLI counterparts. This study contributes to our understanding of the cultural processes behind social inequalities.

Artem Kuriksha, Economics

Illegal Drug Use and Government Policy: Evidence from a Darknet Marketplace

This paper develops a structural model of demand for illegal drug varieties and studies how consumers substitute between different types of drugs in response to government policies. We use a unique longitudinal dataset on prices, quantities, and individual decisions that we obtained by scraping a darknet marketplace that covered the majority of the retail illegal drug trade in Russia. Our estimation procedure exploits a novel set of micro-level moment conditions to identify correlations in preferences for specific drug types and the degree of attachment to them. We find that the median own-price elasticity of demand for illegal drugs is -3.6, and there is high substitution within two classes of drugs: medium-risk stimulants and cannabis. We validate our estimates using exogenous variation in the price of hashish caused by increased policing. The estimated model is used to evaluate counterfactual drug policies. We find that the legalization of cannabis has the benefit of decreasing the use of riskier drugs while increasing cannabis use. For every 4 additional doses of cannabis consumed, 1 less dose of another drug is consumed. Our estimates show that the recent introduction of a new family of synthetic drugs has increased total drug demand in the country by 40%, suggesting that governments should allocate resources to prevent the introduction of new drug products. Finally, our model helps identify the optimal drugs to target for interdiction, specifically those without close substitutes, such as alpha-PVP.

Maya Moritz, Criminology

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words: The Effect of Murals on Crime

Philadelphia’s murals have garnered the city designations including “Mural Capital of the World” and “Best City for Street Art in America.” Previous work has found that murals may help reduce stress, increase safety perceptions, and raise tolerance among local residents, but can murals also reduce crime? Place-based interventions like street lighting, lot greening, and abandoned housing remediation have all been shown to ameliorate violence and crime in the neighborhoods that receive these treatments. Murals may then be the next relatively inexpensive and popular initiative to target violence. In my research, I use a staggered differences-in-differences strategy to examine crime and violence levels before and after mural installation. To identify mechanisms, I extend this framework to incorporate busier street traffic, business revitalization, social disorganization changes, and gentrification. By speaking to the artists involved in these projects and considering the plethora of externalities brought about by mural installation, I construct an inclusive analysis of the effect of murals on crime, neighborhood structure, and resident welfare. For policy recommendation purposes, I perform a cost-benefit analysis and seek to identify the optimal mural size, location, spacing, and content to inspire community action and diminish violence in Philadelphia’s most afflicted communities.