The Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum on March 6 highlighted the breadth, depth and impact of research conducted across Ohio State while recognizing student scholars with one of the largest single‑day award programs dedicated to graduate research on campus.
Held throughout the Ohio Union, the forum brought together graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, staff and community members for oral and poster presentations spanning nearly every academic discipline at the university. Research areas represented ranged from the arts and humanities to engineering, health sciences, business, education, agriculture, mathematical and physical sciences, and social and behavioral sciences, underscoring the interdisciplinary reach of Ohio State’s research enterprise.
Award categories included first‑, second‑ and third‑place honors for oral presentations, as well as multiple levels of recognition for poster presentations. This year’s event awarded nearly $17,000 in cash prizes to top‑judged presentations across academic areas, making the Hayes Forum one of the most substantial sources of competitive research recognition for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars at Ohio State. 85 students and scholars were recognized with awards.
International students and visiting scholars from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Portugal, South Korea and United Kingdom were recognized at the forum.
Winners | 2026 Hayes Advanced Research Forum
Oral/Talk Winners
The Arts
1st Place – Amarth Chen (China), Digital Animation and Interactive Media, A Framework for Imaging System Simulation
2nd Place – Natalia Moreno-Buitrago (Colombia), Music Education, Desde el principio: Engaging Parents in Their Children’s Learning
Biological Sciences
3rd Place – Sara Sequeira (Portugal), Comparative Biomedical Sciences, Tracing Salmonella Dublin on the Move: A Network-Based Infection Model in US Cattle Systems
Business
2nd Place – Nancy Shen (China), Marketing, The Unwilling Ambassador Effect: Logo-Prominent Freebies Reduce Consumer Willingness to Spread Positive WOM
Honorable Mention – Anjali Tapadiya (India), Business Administration, Collateral Damage: How Imposter Scams Become Brand Transgressions
Honorable Mention – Yawen Zheng (China, Logistics, Delivered on Demand: Uncovering the Value of On-Demand Delivery for Retail Success
Education and Human Ecology
2nd Place – Ashwini Chebbi (India), Nutritional Sciences (OSUN), Feasibility and Efficacy of a Well-Formulated Ketogenic Diet in delaying progression of Polycystic Kidney Disease in patients at risk for Rapid Progression
Engineering
1st Place – Kelly Johana Serna Vasco (Colombia), Biomedical Engineering, Engineering of Ligand-Functionalized Extracellular Vesicles for Gene Replacement Therapy for a Rare Genetic Pulmonary Disease
2nd Place – Mejalaa Mega Jayaseelan (United Kingdom), Biomedical Engineering, Development of a 3D In Vitro Fibrotic Lung Platform for Modeling Early Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Pathogenesis
3rd Place – Srinvasan Subramaniyan (India), Electrical and Computer Engineering, Feedback Control GPU Scheduling for Real-time Embedded Systems
Honorable Mention – Yuzhang Liu (China), Biomedical Engineering, Transcriptional and Functional changes in Dorsal Root Ganglion neurons from Male and Female mice with injury induced Discogenic Back Pain
Honorable Mention – Muhammed Ahmad Sultan (Pakistan), Biomedical Engineering, Motion-Robust Whole-Heart MRI-based Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) Reconstruction Framework for Accurate Assessment of Heart Fibrosis
Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
1st Place – Sochina Ranjit (Nepal), Food Science and Technology, Paenibacillin as a Future Natural Food Preservative: Increasing the Productivity by Revealing Quorum Sensing Mediated Gene Regulation in the Producer, Paenibacillus polymyxa
Humanities
1st Place – Ka Fai Law (United Kingdom), Chinese Linguistics, The Production of Cantonese Sentence-Final Particles: Immersed Speakers vs. Heritage Speakers
Mathematical and Physical Sciences
1st Place – Valmuri Srivardhan (India), Organic Chemistry, Electrocatalytic Upcycling of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Plastics
2nd Place – Purva Shripad Damale (India), Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dynamic Spray Mass Spectrometry for Rapid and Direct Analysis of Complex Mixtures
3rd Place – Barbara Fornaciari (Brazil), Physical Chemistry, Structure-Dependent Hydroxyl Radical Quantum Yields in Eumelanin Probed by Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Honorable Mention – Poulomi Chakraborty (India), Physics, High-throughput Computational Search for Topological Thermoelectrics
Honorable Mention – Yiwei Zhou (China), Chemistry, Understanding 59Co NMR Temperature Sensitivity by Spin-Crossover Co(III) Complexes
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Honorable Mention – Eunjee Ko (South Korea), Psychology, Automatic Action Representation of Vaping in the Brain Predicts Future Intention to Vape Among Young Adults Who Use E-Cigarettes
Postdoctoral: Biological, Life, Health Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering
2nd Place – Angela de Aguila, Institute of Brain, Behavior, and Immunology, Manipulation of the Gut Microbiome Alters the Intraperitoneal Immune System
3rd Place – Nisitha Wijewantha (Sri Lanka), Biomedical Engineering, Real-Time, Label-Free Monitoring of Nanoparticle Drug Release via Nanopore Sensing under Physiological Conditions
Postdoctoral: Physical & Mathematical Sciences and Engineering
1st Place – Firoz Shah Tuglak Khan (India), Inorganic Chemistry, Understanding Spin Dynamics by Tuning Molecular Symmetry in Metal Complexes
2nd Place – Ratnadip De (India), Spectroscopy, Ultrafast XUV Circular Dichroism Reveals Transient Spin Polarization in Chiral Copper Oxide: A Pathway to Understanding Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity
3rd Place – Srikanth Dasari (India), Chemistry, Clock-Like Zero-Field Spin Dynamics in Chemically Stable Ni(II) Complex Spin Qubit for Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Imaging
Poster Session Winners
Session 1: Biological & Health Sciences (Combined Session)
2nd Place – Tasnin Akter Nila (Bangladesh), Chemistry and Biochemistry, Probing the Secondary Structure of KIF5A pre-mRNA in Wild-Type and DiseaseAssociated Mutants
3rd Place – Ayushi Das (India), Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB), A Novel Mouse Model to Identify Antigen-Specific Immune Responses in Pancreatic Cancer Cachexia
Session 2: Education & Human Ecology and Social & Behavioral Sciences (Combined Session)
Honorable Mention - Suraksha Baral (Nepal), Agriculture, Environmental, and Development Economics, Cross-Country Evidence on How Normative Framing Shapes Household Food Waste Behavior
Session 3: Food, Agriultural, and Environmental Sciences
1st Place – Sushma Katari (India), Agricultural Engineering, A Multi-Sensor Imaging Strategy to Enhance Soybean Growth Monitoring
2nd Place – Hrithik Shetty (India), Food Science and Technology, Mathematical Modeling of High Moisture Extrusion Cooling Die Using NonLinear Viscoelastic Rheological Models to Optimize the Texture of Plant-Based Meat Analogs
3rd Place – Manpreet Kaur (India), Food Science and Technology, Controlling Off Odors in Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and Yellow Perch (Perca flavescens) Fillets via Antioxidant Rich Diet
Honorable Mention – Sandeep Dhakal (Nepal), Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering, Remote Sensing Based Phenotyping of Rubber Dandelion: Linking Canopy Traits to Root Biomass and Natural Rubber Yield
Session 4: Engineering
1st Place – Krutarth Pandit (India), Chemical Engineering, Advanced Chemical Looping Gasification of Biomass for High-Purity Syngas Production with Inherent CO2 Capture: A Pathway to Sustainable Liquid Fuels
3rd Place – XingZhi Li (China), Integrated Systems Engineering, Numerical Simulation of Microdamage in Equine Superficial Digital Flexor Tendon
Honorable Mention – Syed Murtaza Arshad (Pakistan), Electrical and Computer Engineering, Read4DFlow: Real-time Whole-Heart 4D Flow Imaging from a 5-Minute Scan Using Multi-Dynamic Deep Image Prior
Honorable Mention – Yizhen Jia (China), Material Science and Engineering, Flexible Light-Addressable Potentiometric Sensors for Cellular Imaging of Electrophysiological Signals
Session 5: Math & Physical Sciences
Honorable Mention – Rohan Maji (India), Chemistry, Remote Tuning of a Zr/Co Heterobimetallic Catalyst for Olefin Isomerization
Honorable Mention – Piyush Anil Kumar Sharma (India), Physical Chemistry, Carbonate-Enhanced Photocorrosion Limits the CO2 Reduction Reactivity on CuFeO2 Delafossite Photocathodes