UMW Students Present at NCUR 2026

Fourteen UMW students recently traveled to Richmond to present at the 2026 National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR). This annual conference, sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) and held this year April 13-15, 2026, brought together more than 4000 undergraduate students from all 50 US states, as well as several other countries, to present their original research and creative endeavors in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Mary Washington sent students from biology, computer science, English, physics, and sociology.

McKenzie Cheynet (biomedical sciences, 2026) and Mohammad Ali Hassan (biomedical sciences, 2027), were two of five biology students mentored by Dr. Laura Sipe who presented at NCUR. They presented a poster titled “Cisplatin-Induced Immunogenic Cell Death Delayed Tumor Onset in a Preclinical Model of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer.” McKenzie commented:

Investigating cancer cell biology alongside Dr. Sipe has been the defining experience of my undergraduate years. Beyond the technical skills I gained at the bench, being part of a community of researchers, hearing peers speak honestly about their inspirations, setbacks, and discoveries, has fundamentally shaped how I think about science. (McKenzie Cheynet)

Mohammad agreed, especially about the experience of presenting at NCUR:

Seeing a variety of undergraduate students working in their own respective fields was an eye-opening moment, and taught me how diverse research can be.” (Mohammad Ali Hassan)

A group of computer science students (Aloysious Kabonge data science 2026, Belen Telahun data science 2026, and Murtaza Fahkry data science 2026), worked with visiting instructor Jeffrey Goldthorp on their project “Using Artificial Intelligence to Satisfy Generalized Use Cases.” They delivered an oral presentation that explained their applied AI effort, designed to help regulatory agencies make sense of large amounts of complex, high-stakes information that is often scattered across PDFs, web pages, and older text sources. All three spoke of the practical skills and knowledge that they gained in the project:

This experience has helped me to broaden my understanding on the different use cases of Large Language Models (Aloysious Kabonge)

Ally Miller (English 2026) was one of three students mentored by Dr. Shumona Dasgupta who presented at NCUR. She spoke about her analysis of South Asian film: “Women, Tradition, and Cosmopolitanism in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding.”

Presenting at NCUR was a deeply fulfilling experience for me and made me even more eager to share my findings in future projects, including my independent study on ethical representation within South Asian media that followed this project.” (Ally Miller)

 

Pictured below are other UMW student presenters at NCUR 2026: Maggie Haggerty (conservation biology 2026), “Predicting Presence and Preventing Poaching: Saving the Spotted Turtle;” William Burkey (biomedical science and physics 2026), “Rheological Effects of Microplastics on Biological Tissues;” Sofia Szczepankiewicz (biomedical sciences 2026), “Wanted: Dead and Immunogenic. Combining Metformin and Chemotherapy to Promote Immunogenic Cell Death in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer;” Mallory Thompson (biomedical science 2026), “Methionine Restriction Promotes Immunogenic Cell Death in Triple Negative Breast Cancer;” Alexis Pineda-Bautista (sociology 2026), “Public Opinion, Immigration, and the News: The Weight People Put on the Media;” Jeassa Pearl Nabong (kineseology 2027), “The Immigrant Plight;” Timothy Frazier (English-creative writing 2027), “The Hero, the Trickster, and the Shadow: A Jungian Reading of Gun Island;”Katriana Meiman (biomedical sciences 2027), “Mast cell contributions to connective tissue weakness.”