an interdisciplinary symposium for seniors at Brown University

April 22 & 28–29, 2026

Critical Connections, Reflecting on the Journey

Symposium Schedule

[Day 2] Tuesday, April 28 Petteruti Lounge 

12:00-1:15 p.m. | Roundtable: 

Dis/abilities, Education, and Design 

Rishika Kartik – Disability and Design in the Practice of Medicine 

Hannah Stoch – Shaping Toward the Normative: Knowledge Production and Dissemination at Private Autism Schools 

Zoe Florida – Programming Materials, Designing Systems: Translating Bioinspired Materials into Regenerative Applications


1:30 – 3:00 p.m. | Pecha Kucha Lightning Talks 

Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou – No One Gets What Cognitive Narratology Is, but I Swear it Makes Sense 

Harshil Garg – How Brown led me to the UN 

Asya Gipson – When Communities Fail: Education and Empowerment in the Real World 

Emily Lin – There Was Never a Right Decision 

Nene Mokonchu – The Democratic Dilemma: Passive Pedagogy, Elite Compliance, and the War on Critical Thought 

Matteo Papadopoulos – Legal Geographies of Power at Brown and Beyond 

Oscar Petrov – What is the ‘Target Morphology’ of a Human System? 

Cal Waytana – Curriculum Evolution 


4:30-6:00 p.m. | Poster Session

Nikitha Bhimireddy – Understanding Skin Tone Modification: Behaviors, Influences, and Knowledge Among University Students 

Aidan Choi – The Move On Chinatown 

Sydney Chon – Narratives of Care: Exploring Diversity and Health Management through Children’s Books 

Michael Y. Clarke – Characterizing and Targeting Dysregulated Cholesterol as a Driver of Myeloproliferative Neoplasms 

Liz Duke-Moe – The Quiet Machine: On Soft Robotics, Bio-Composite Structures, and Lo-Tec Synthesizing 

Eleanor Fuller – Connections Between Control and Compassion to Enact Social Change 

Junnie Kim – How Old is “Old Enough”? Examining Extended Foster Care through an Emerging Adulthood Perspective 

Huy Le – Spatial Transcriptomics and Network Analysis of Prostate Cancer 

Christopher Liu – Participant Meal Delivery Preferences in Meals on Wheels: A Thematic Analysis of Survey Data from the Deliver-EE Trial 

Phillip Meader Yetter – Novel Analysis Framework for Studying 

Jake Regenwetter – “Hey, I’m Walking Here!”: Simulating Vision- Based Pedestrian Dynamics Models for Multiple Collision Avoidance 

Anita Zahiri – Deep RNA Sequencing as a Tool for Assessing Infection in Transplant Patients 

(click below/page 1 & 3 for Days 1 & 3)

Pages: 1 2 3