Senior Thesis Symposium 2025
On May 12, BUA’s 67 seniors presented their research at our annual Senior Thesis Symposium in BU’s Metcalf Hall. Senior theses are the culmination of BUA’s academic program and are undertaken by all seniors in partnership with a BU professor. The Symposium, open to the entire BUA community, celebrates our seniors and gives them platform to share their research with and field questions from a non-expert audience. Each senior prepares a poster featuring the highlights of their thesis research along with an accompanying ‘lightning talk,’ and then delivers an individual classroom presentation to their peers, teachers, and family members.
From bioinformatics to urban planning, the depth and breadth of our seniors’ research is astounding. As you can see from the thesis topics below, this is not just an academic exercise: these students have dedicated themselves to research and action with real-world impact in areas they are passionate about, and are poised for lives of purpose in college and beyond.
Class of 2025 Senior Thesis Titles
Addressing Massachusetts’ Housing Crisis: Analyzing Legislative Efforts to Increase Affordable Housing Access
Human in vitro modeling assesses the immune response elicited by vaccine adjuvant formulations in children
Investigating the Impact of Various Opioid Use Disorder Rehabilitation Services on Treatment Completion for Individuals with Mental and Substance Use Disorders
Boston on Film: Exploring the City’s Identity Through Cinema
The New Plantation: Incarceration, Capitalism, and the Oppression of Minorities
Using A Modified Sea Perch Robot for Water Quality Testing in the Charles River
Political Applications of Archaeology under Capitalism and Fascism
A Community-Based Program Model For Engagement of Underserved Students in STEM
Properties of Alpha-Synuclein and Its Effects on Parkinson’s Disease
Piezo2 Activation on the Development of Mouse LTMRs
Long short-term memory neural network to identify surgical targets in human epilepsy
Effects of Ocean Acidification on Humans
AutomataGPT: A Generative Pre-Transformer Model
“Viva a banda-da-da // Long Live the Band”: Tropicália and the Cannibalistic Counterculture of the Global 1960s
A Ban on Billionaires?!
Exploring the Implications of Light-Based Communications Through SeaPerch II
The Prince as an Enigma: Unraveling Machiavelli’s Intentions
Direct Conversion of Centenarian PBMCs as an In Vitro Model of Aging and Resilience: DNA Extraction Protocol Optimization
Roads Not Taken: The Legacy of Boston’s Unbuilt Urban Freeway
Food Science Meets Commercialization: Developing Freeze-Thaw Protocols for Almond Milk and Non-Dairy Coffee Creamer
Polyp Growth Patterns of the Deep Sea Coral Genus Narella Due to Varying Environmental Factors
Perception and Imitation of Linguistic Prosody in Autistic Adults
Relationships between biomass and symbiont density under different food and light treatments in temperate scleractinian coral Astrangia poculata
Perceiving Penelope
Poseidon-Bot: A Streamlined Document Parsing RAG Model
Cages at Risk: The Role of Anterior Column Release in Preventing Cage Dislodgement in Spinal Fusion Surgeries
Reinforcement Learning for CARLA: Using a Custom-Designed CARLA Reinforcement Learning Environment for Self-driving Cars
The Revolutionary Potential of Postmodern Aesthetics: A Historiography and Analysis
Traversing Food Deserts: Solving Food Insecurity with Urban Vertical Farming Systems
Tuberous Sclerosis Complex
Criticisms of the Field Of Impostor Phenomenon Research: Evaluating the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale
On Some Aspects of Computer Programming of Business Simulation: An Example of Developing a “National Economy Development” Simulation
How AEK, Panathinaikos, and Olympiakos Reflect Athens’ Social Divisions
Identifying the Optimal Parameters of Neuromodulation in Epilepsy
Modelling of Rhizospheric Escherichiacoli and Pseudomonas simiae using COMETS
TwoStream: A Convolutional Neural Network for Cardiac Imaging Diagnosis
Exploring Cultural Readiness: A Phenomenological Study of the Engagement of Vietnamese Americans in Diabetes Prevention and Self-Management Programs
Trauma & Agency: Understanding Abused Characters Across Texts
A Dilemma in Words: An Analysis of An American Dilemma Reviews from 1944 through 1964
Microeconomic Sustainability of the State Minimum Wage in Massachusetts
Poseidon-Bot: A Streamlined Document Parsing RAG Model
The Impact of All of Us Research Program on Personalized Medicine and Health Disparities
Exploring Cultural Readiness: A Phenomenological Study of the Engagement of Vietnamese Americans in Diabetes Prevention and Self-Management Programs
Through the Eyes of the Breedloves: Slavery, Racism, and Identity in The Bluest Eye
The Responses of Infauna and Epifauna to Nitrogen Loading in Shallow Water Seagrass Beds
Modeling the Growth and Gene Knckouts of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae with COMETS
Against Definition: Identity and Technology in Penda’s Fen
Mapping Dynamics: Invariant Manifolds in Theory and Application
Implications of Climate Change on Future Crop Yields and Potential Solutions
The Effects of the Overexpression of CKAP5 on Facial Morphology and the Development of Craniofacial Disorders
The Power Behind The Model Minority Myth in 2025: Media and Mental Health
How Body Motion Shapes Social Perception
Modeling Long-term Habitability in Known Exoplanets
Factors Affecting Measurements Acquired by Remote Satellites using PLE/PLHR for Orbital Power Line Monitoring
Implementing Classical Architecture in the Design of the City of Atlantis: Drawing Atlantis as Plato Would’ve Imagined
Expanding the Frame: Diversifying the Female Figure in Art Nouveau
1950s Japanese Existentialist Cinema: Origins, Significance, and Meaning
The Comparative Study On Variation in Blood Drip Stains Characteristics due to Change in Paper Varieties
Generating HIV Proviruses to Model Variation of Transcription and Latency Across Different HIV Subtypes
Using Bioinformatics to Look for Treatments for Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Validation of Machine Learning Algorithms for Identifying Sharp-Wave Ripples in Epileptic Conditions
Play with Your Food Before You Eat: Exploring the Effect of Dominance on Play Initiation and Foraging Priority in Red (Varecia variegata rubra) and Black-and-White (Varecia variegata variegata) Ruffed Lemurs (Primates, Lemuridae)
Development of a New Method for Tetherless Underwater Communication Using COTS Parts
Eclipse: The Coexistence of Light and Dark in the Healing Process
Innervation of Axolotl Blastemas
Central Nervous System Recovery Evaluation through Computational With Analysis of Locomotion Kinematics
Epidemiology of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Survey from a Community-based Screening Program in South Texas