English

My project explores the complicated cultural impact of Barbie, a toy that seems simple on the surface but carries layered messages about gender, race, class, and identity. I use comparative cultural analysis to unpack Barbie’s meaning. By placing Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie, beside Emily Prager’s essay “Our Barbies, Ourselves,” and Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Barbie-Q,” I investigate how the doll functions as a vessel for conflicting ideologies regarding gender, race, and socioeconomic status. 

My research highlights a critical disconnect between Barbie’s marketing as a tool for female empowerment and the reality of her design… (excerpt) 

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✨ What makes this strong: Clear thesis, comparative methodology, intersectional analysis, cultural relevance, and specific textual examples.

Economics

The Economic Importance of Human Capital and Trade between 1995 and 2020 Between 1995 and 2020, many high-income countries—despite their wealth and industrial maturity—experienced slow or uneven economic growth. This raises a central question: What continues to drive growth in economies that appear to have already reached advanced levels of development? This paper investigates three potential drivers: trade openness, life expectancy, and government expenditure on education. 

The results reveal several unexpected dynamics that challenge common assumptions about growth in high-income countries… (excerpt) 

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✨ What makes this strong: Specific timeframe, clear research question, quantitative methodology, policy implications, and challenges to conventional assumptions.

Science, Engineering, and Mathematics

Solar energy is important for generating clean energy while helping lower the rate of carbon emissions. Solar cells are used to capture UV light and are made of semiconductors that manage the flow of energy; however, solar cells suffer from low efficiency. A possible solution to improve the amount of light captured by solar cells is photon upconversion, where low-energy light is converted to a high-energy emissive state. 

Lead (II) sulfide (PbS) nanocrystals with PDI acceptor ligands are used as a model to study the challenges in tunability of NC-molecule systems… (excerpt)

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✨ What makes this strong: Clear problem statement, specific methodology, collaborative research context, technical detail, and practical applications for clean energy.

Examples of student work from previous symposiums:

Samples of Poster Presentations