Senior Thesis

A culminating experience for all BUA students, the Senior Thesis is an independent research project that provides students with the opportunity to follow an intellectual passion in depth with the guidance of a university professor.

The year-long project is designed to demonstrate a student’s ability to read closely, research thoroughly, think analytically, and write coherently in a scholarly fashion. Thesis topics include research in humanities, STEM, and the arts. Papers are expected to be between 4,000-6,000 words in length and written in accordance with generally accepted University standards. All students present their research to the BUA community prior to graduation.

List of Senior Thesis Topics, Class of 2018

  • Vortex Induced Vibration of a Piggyback Pipeline Half Buried in the Seabed
  • Deaf Education in America
  • Negative Interest Rates: A Duration and Convexity Analysis
  • Machine Learning Algorithm
  • Alternate Light Sources: An Exploration of NIGHTSEA DFP-1 in the Forensic Sciences
  • Discover and Illuminate Truth: Reception and Impact of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
  • Early Visual Cortex Contrast Gain Control and Visual Discomfort
  • The Ma’arat al-Numan Museum: a Case Study at Archaeological Art Conservation During Conflict
  • Thomas Hobbes and the Right of Revolution
  • The Role of Gravitational Time Dilation in the Apparent Accelerated Expansion of the Universe
  • Injury Incidence and Prevention in Young Dancers
  • Purification and Synthesis of Rubella Capsid Protein for Diagnostic Purposes
  • Using Liver Radiofrequency Ablation Treatments to Detect Breast Tumor Growth via MRI
  • Scanning Router Web Applications for CSRF Using Firmadyne
  • Applications of tDCS to the ACC to Mediate Error-Related Negativity Responses in GAD/OCD Individuals
  • The Talos Principle and What Makes Us Human
  • Targeting the DNA Damage Response of Tumor Cells to make Chemotherapy More Effective
  • Degradation Kinetics of FX Series Compound in Aqueous Solution
  • Using Financial Engineering to Minimize Climate Change Investment Risk
  • The Practicality of Gene Therapeutic Methods Targeting Tumor Cells Through Improving Polymeric Nanoparticle Multifunctional Delivery Systems
  • Helen and Medea: Breaking Female Stereotype
  • Media Fog in the Syrian Civil War
  • Extracting Murine Colon DNA in Order to Observe Effects of Shiga Toxin Producing E. coli on Murine Immune System
  • Studying the Effects of Mutation on Antibiotic Resistant Escherichia Coli Using a Revised Plasmid-Based Single-Point Mutagenesis Protocol
  • The Decision of the United States to Declare War on the Spanish Empire
  • Understanding Tradition and Modernity in the Art of Xu Bing
  • Accounting for Leverage in Intangible and Tangible Investments Across the Business Cycle
  • Cooperation and Antagonism: Interactions Between Y. Lipolytica and P. Putida in Coculture
  • Parasitic Computing and its Applications in Bitcoin Mining
  • The First Red Scare as Prototype and Legacy
  • An Understanding of Dissociative Identity Disorder Across History
  • Leaf Longevity in Evergreens at the Arnold Arboretum
  • Using DeepDream to Visualize Convolutional Neural Networks
  • Emotion and Meaning in Music: A Composition and Analysis
  • The Impact of a Completely Digitized Currency on a National Economy
  • Fabrication of Field Probes to Measure Magnetic Fields in the Halbach MRI Scanner
  • Fighting Implicit Bias in Martial Arts
  • Literature Review of the Field of Wireless
  • Actuation of Micro and Nano-scale Instruments
  • Multi Party Computation Case Study Using Leaflet Visualization
  • Inducing Epigenetic Silencing of Integrated HIV DNA Using a KRAB-Associated Disabled CRISPR/Cas9 System
  • Truth-telling as a Dominant Strategy for Information Elicitation
  • Temperature Preference In Cave and River Variants of Astyanax mexicanus
  • ANDESITE: A Nanosatellite Swarm for Measurement of the Aurora Borealis
  • The Problem of Irene: The Woman in Sherlock and Elementary
  • The New Military Band: Band Repertoire as ‘Art-Music’ in the Early Twentieth Century
  • Mutations involved with SID-3 and SID-4 proteins: RNA interference in Caenorhabditis elegans
  • Detecting Ransomware with Machine Learning and Recurrent Neural Networks
  • Competition Without Innovation: Analyzing Niche Markets in the Medical Alarm Industry and Engineering a Smartphone Compatible Device
  • A Machine Learning Approach to Ransomware Detection
  • An Independent Quaternion Proof of Jacobi’s Four Square Theorem