On Friday, Binghamton University concluded its weeklong Research Days celebration with student poster sessions covering a variety of topics.

The week saw a wide range of research-centered events, including a community-engaged learning and research showcase on Tuesday, a Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies research panel on Wednesday and a fast-paced thesis competition on Thursday, where participants had three minutes to describe their research while using only a single slide as a visual aide.

Three campus-wide poster sessions were held along with an additional digital research presentation.

Caroline Antalek ‘16 is the coordinator for the Source Project, a selective first-year University research program in the social sciences and humanities. She said opportunities like the Source Project and First-Year Research Immersion program, which provides freshmen three semesters of science or engineering research experience, are a “crucial part of the undergraduate experience.”

“These programs really help students academically, but also in this transition to college because it’s a big step to take, to go from high school to college,” Antalek told Pipe Dream. “Small class sizes, I think, are such a huge help, but also to be able to work with your professor in a close mentoring relationship helps foster these academic skills. The professors know that they are first-year students, so they really guide them step by step in the research process, and they provide so much support.”

She said these programs allow students to build social networks, adding that she knows participants who became friends through research programs.

Antalek also mentioned the Tuesday screening of “Maybe You Should Talk to Something,” a documentary produced last year by Eva Tikhomirova, a sophomore majoring in economics, as part of the Empathy, Ethics and Society research stream. The documentary investigated the use of therapy AI chatbots.

At Friday’s first poster session, Colin Buscarino, a freshman majoring in philosophy, politics and law, studied “coalition building within contemporary authoritarian contexts” to dissect features of successful and failed resistance movements. He “compiled these ideas into a framework” and “applied that to the United States to evaluate the status of anti-Trump resistance.”

“What I think is so rewarding about my doing this research, and honestly why I picked something in the subject of resistance, is because we see a lot of very worrying things in the news and it’s kind of dystopian,” Buscarino said. “We see these horrible parallels to ‘1984’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ and all you can do is sit and wonder, how can you actually, tactically do something about this?”

Taylor Rogers, a freshman majoring in political science, researched the “freedom of speech denied within reproductive rights and how Syrian and Palestinian women peacebuilders face silencing and exile.” For her research, she spoke to 14 women peacebuilders in exile, discussing why they left their home countries and where they now reside.

The program flew eight of these women in for a conference, helping Rogers further jumpstart her research. After speaking with them, she examined different systems responsible for silencing these women. Through her research, she determined that culture and peacebuilding silenced these women.

After speaking with these women, she said she wanted to know how people in host countries can help exiled peacebuilders amplify their voices.

Simal Patel, a junior double-majoring in global public health and biology, shared her nutritional research on iron absorption rates among children in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Patel’s research, done through the University’s Wander Lab, showed that iron intake has less impact on nutrition than protein and fiber.

She said that a class she had taken inspired her to continue researching in the future.

“When I first joined this lab, I didn’t actually know much about nutritional epidemiology, but I had previously taken a class with this professor and so I just had an opportunity, and I’ve actually really enjoyed it,” Patel said. “So I kind of do want to pursue some form of epidemiological research throughout my medical career.”

Kristen Lodge, a senior majoring in psychology, works in the Human Sexualities Lab and utilized survey data stretching from 2011 to measure whether undergraduates now have less sex. She wanted to pursue this after seeing many popular articles pushing this claim without presenting clear statistical evidence. While her findings showed a decrease in casual hookups, she said “masturbation frequency and pornography consumption are both directly related to sexual activity,” and that increased engagement in these activities is correlated with more sexual activity — a finding that surprised her.

“I think it’s important to highlight the efforts that students have made to integrate themselves into the community — not just integrate, but to give back to the community that they’ve become a part of,” Antalek said.