STAR Showcase Demonstrates Students’ Research Skills

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STAR Showcase Demonstrates Students' Research Skills

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Every summer since 2003, dozens of rising second-year undergraduate students at Drexel University have received funding to spend 10 weeks learning the ropes of research either in established labs or as independent study. It's all part of the Pennoni Honors College's STAR (Students Tackling Advanced Research) Scholars program, which has enabled generations of Dragons to research advanced topics at a higher level - all in their first year at the University. At the end of the summer, they present their findings and discuss what they learned with their peers and the public.

This year's cohort at the STAR Summer Showcase, held on Aug. 28, included 122 students from across 10 schools and colleges who presented posters on their research, ranging in topics from biomimicry in textiles, to developing a low-cost wearable device for electrodermal activity and heart rate variability, to using large language models to structure physicians' reports that assess traumatic brain injuries.

Also in the cohort were 12 Velay Fellows, the fellowship aims to promote women in STEM and honors Frances Velay, who was a scientist in the Philadelphia area and is funded by the Panaphil Foundation. There were also four Civic Impact awardees, who were selected for the Teagle Civic Impact Award for research that contributes to the public good; and seven students who weren't technically STAR Scholars, but rather DREAM Scholars studying aging under a College of Nursing and Health Professions R25 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant (R25AG081175) called Drexel DREAM (health Disparities, Research, Experiential learning and Mentorship).

Here are a few highlights from the showcase:

Tasmia Rahman, computer science '29, studied how to detect artificial intelligence (AI) "deepfakes" and analyze if small patches in a photo and specific facial regions can be effectively used to detect fabricated materials.

"As these manipulations become more realistic, they raise concerns about privacy, misinformation and digital trust," Rahman said.

Most detection models look at the full image, but Rahman wanted to enhance efficiency by using these smaller patches. Rahman and her mentor, Feng Liu, PhD, assistant professor in the College of Computing & Informatics, first trained a baseline full-image detection model to act as the control. Then, Rahman took 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64 pixel-sized squares from the nose region and compared their detection accuracy to the full image.

"The full image did pretty well," Rahman said. "There's no difference significantly, but when you go deeper, it gets more accurate down to the really tiny portions. The 32x32 patch did the best overall."

She looked at different regions, like the eyes, nose and mouth, and compared them to the baseline image to find the most informative facial areas - the right eye was the most informative in distinguishing real images from fake. Rahman took her project a step further by using different image generators to compare the accuracy of the model and patches. Future research will focus on these regions and patch sizes to improve the efficiency and robustness of detection.

It was Rahman's first experience with research in her major, and she was one of 12 Frances Velay Fellows as well. The group of fellows met with each other and guest mentors weekly throughout the summer, finding support as they navigate building careers in STEM fields.

"We were all very supportive of each other, and the directors were able to help us through feelings of imposter syndrome and offer advice because they were once young women like us," Rahman said.

Artem Stehura, civil engineering '29, spent his summer simulating traffic at urban intersections, working to design an adaptive signal control strategy that responds to real-time CO₂ emissions instead of just queue length to reduce overall emissions.

"Most people don't realize how much traffic lights shape our days. They control how long we wait, how much fuel we burn and how much time we spend in our cars or other forms of transportation," Stehura said.

Stehura was working with a new simulation interface he had never used before, so the first few attempts did not produce the results he wanted. He spent about two weeks building a detailed four-way intersection in SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility), complete with multiple lanes, traffic lights and other controls. Once the software was set up, he could adjust green light durations, vary vehicle types and run hundreds of different scenarios. He experimented with different mixes of gas-powered and electric vehicles, varied arrival rates, and a wide range of green light timings, generating thousands of data points. In each scenario, he ran thousands of cars under both queue-based and emissions-based signal controls, carefully analyzing queue lengths, average delay times, and the amount of CO2 emissions saved.

With the average Philadelphian spending 77 hours each year sitting completely still in traffic, Stehura didn't want to increase delays when adjusting the signal controls. He found that using emission-aware signal control reduced CO2 emissions by roughly 3-5 % while keeping traffic delays nearly identical to those under queue-based control.

"It may sound small, but across thousands of roads and millions of cars, it adds up to an enormous amount, saving tons of CO2 every day," Stehura said.

However, even though Stehura's research demonstrated measurable improvements in traffic delays, implementing these changes in real-world traffic light systems would require significant time and funding, both of which can be difficult to secure.

"My career goal is to bring this work from simulations to real streets," Stehura said. "This experience reshaped how I see civil engineering. It's about designing smarter, greener systems that make a real difference. Leading a research project from start to finish, managing every detail and decision, taught me the true meaning of ownership. I'm also grateful for the guidance of my professor, Dr. Liang Zhang [assistant teaching professor in the College of Engineering], and the UREP team, whose mentorship helped me navigate challenges and turn ideas into real results."

Taslim Sabil, education '28, spent her summer studying frameworks of kindergarten readiness and how the definition has shifted over the decades from when it was started for children could play and learn creativity and social connections.

"Now, readiness means being able to count to 20, write your name and recognize letters, before you even step into the classroom," Sabil said. "While these skills are valuable, educators are crowding out unstructured play and relationship building, which are essential for social-emotional development."

That development revolves around unspoken lessons, like sharing, self-regulation and problem-solving. Those skills, called the "hidden curriculum," aren't included on readiness checklists, but they have a big influence on how kids adjust to school. For Sabil's research, she served as an afternoon teacher for the Kindergarten Bridge program run by the School of Education, which helps rising kindergarteners learn the basics of being a student, a d focused on social-emotional learning. Kids had an hour of free play as well as stations where they practiced imaginative play, problem-solving, negotiation skills and teamwork. She wanted to balance the academic skills and the skills of the "hidden curriculum."

"Why are we forcing these kids to meet academic benchmarks before they've had a chance to fall in love with learning?" Sabil said. "We could be using kindergarten with its original intent: to use that year to prepare children in social-emotional ways."

Sabil previously conducted research in high school on how Muslim students maintain their faith while attending a typical Western high school. She currently works with the School District of Philadelphia as a community leader in the facilities planning process, advocating for communities' needs during budget discussions.

"I'm very passionate about educational equity and if there's a way that I can make a difference, that's what I'm here to do," Sabil said. "I'd love to continue this research."

Miles Levesque, environmental studies and sustainability '29, studied two community gardens as a way of looking into climate resilience in urban areas. Through investigating the Summer/Winter Garden and Dornsife Community Garden, both of which are within a mile of Drexel, he researched how community gardens can bolster climate resilience, community ties and food access within cities.

"Since the late 1890s, food accessibility has been a reason for community gardens," Levesque said. "So many community gardens arise out of a need for food access and community resilience when they have been disinvested."

Levesque assessed local impact, ecological health and the gardeners' perception of urban development pressures for his study, which included surveys, interviews, soil analysis and more. Overall, analysis showed that not only do the community gardens improve food access, but they also increase ties amongst community members.

"We have this really holistic sense of health that comes from community gardens on a social and an environmental level that is correlated directly with longevity of and investment in these spaces," Levesque said.

This was Levesque's first independent research project, and he said it helped him solidify his career goals.

"I came to Drexel for environmental studies in order to work in public policy with the goal of improving environmental access in communities, but it was really only through this project that I was able to see in a tangible way how I could make a difference during my time at Drexel and outside of that," Levesque said.

The non-STAR Scholar presenters were a new addition under special circumstances. Chris Sell, PhD, professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the College of Medicine, and Rose Ann DiMaria-Ghalili, PhD, professor and senior associate dean for research and interim associate vice provost for research and innovation in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, have an R25 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant (R25AG081175) called Drexel DREAM (health Disparities, Research, Experiential learning and Mentorship) Scholars that will fund 36 research co-ops and 22 STAR Scholars over five years as they research aging. Their annual funding ended Aug. 31, and they weren't sure if it would be continued - luckily, however, it will be, so the program will continue.

This year, there were two DREAM STAR Scholars this year in addition to seven co-op DREAM students, so DiMaria-Ghalili and Jaya Mohan, director of Pennoni's Undergraduate Research and Enrichment Programs (UREP), coordinated to bring those students to the showcase to show their research so they could get experience with presenting a poster - a key skill for researchers. Because they're earlier in their projects, the DREAM co-op students presented on literature reviews.

"The purpose is to train undergraduate underrepresented students on aging research," DiMaria-Ghalili said. "It's very similar to the STAR Scholars program, but it's over a longer period, and there are a lot of mentorship activities. We weren't sure if we would be able to keep them on their projects, so we were so happy that STAR allowed our students to present. It's exciting for them."

Kaleigh Gillis, biological sciences '29, is a DREAM STAR Scholar studying how sex and exercise, plus gender, shape cognitive aging, as physical activity is known to protect brain health.

"One of the things I found was that women tend to show longer, stronger cognitive performance, like later into adulthood than men, but the second they start declining, they decline two times faster than men," Gillis said.

As she worked in the lab with Meghan Smith, PhD, assistant teaching professor in CNHP's Health Sciences Department, over the summer, Gillis saw patients perform cognitive tests that exercised their episodic memory, attention, working speed and processing speed. Patients were split into young sedentary, older sedentary and older active groups.

"First, in all the groups together, the episodic memory had a statistical difference between the younger and older sedentary groups, which is interesting because in Alzheimer's disease, the episodic memory is the first to go," Gillis said. "Then we split down to the females and males and in the episodic memory and verbal learning, women outperformed men in both of these tests."

research College of Engineering School of Biomedical Engineering Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design School of Education Pennoni Honors College College of Medicine College of Nursing and Health Professions Bennett S. LeBow College of Business College of Computing and Informatics Westphal College of Media Arts and Design College of Arts and Sciences College of Computing and Informatics College of Engineering College of Medicine College of Nursing and Health Professions LeBow College of Business Dornsife School of Public Health Pennoni Honors College School of Biomedical Engineering Science, and Health Systems School of Education

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