The new Columbia College Travel Award for Presenters provides students with funding to present their research at conferences across the US and internationally. Read on to learn about the work students presented during the 2025-2026 academic year!
Clockwise from left: Neena Dzur CC'26, Adrienne Ferguson CC'27, Bryan Ge, CC'26, Isha Karim, CC'26, Joanna Lin, CC'26, Emilia Jacome, CC'27, Maxwell Ma, CC'28, and Ray Wu, CC'28
Neena Dzur, CC'26 presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s annual conference in Chicago. Her work on emotional regulation and supporting others through emotion analyzed a dataset she helped collect as a Research Assistant for the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Lab, under the supervision of Dr. Kevin Ochsner.
Adrienne Ferguson, CC'27 took her research to the Northeast Under/graduate Research Organization for Neuroscience (NEURON) Conference in Hamden, Connecticut. Her poster detailed findings from a new pilot study she is currently leading that is uncovering mechanisms by which electroconvulsive therapy may promote autophagic clearance of alpha-synuclein pathology in Parkinson’s disease models.
Bryan Ge, CC'26 attended the Carroll Round Conference in Washington, D.C., an annual international economics conference held by Georgetown University. Bryan presented on the complexities of interconnection queues, including a a model he developed for the decision-making of prospective generators, using a differences-in-differences design.
Emilia Jacome, CC'27 traveled to Seville, Spain to present her work at the Dopamine Society Conference. She gave a talk entitled “An Adoptive T Cell Transfer Model of Parkinson's Disease,” developed from her research in the Sulzer Laboratory investigating whether dopamine neuron death is mediated by T cell responses against antigenic aSyn epitopes, as well as presented a poster at the conference.
Isha Karim, CC'26 joined the "Marginal Notes: The Making of Narratives" exhibition in Trondheim, Norway. presented her senior thesis, “Marginal Cartographies: Thinking with the Margin as Space and Identity," which develops a critical theory of annotation, examining how marginal readers at elite academic institutions produce counter-hegemonic knowledge through the material practice of writing in the margins of books.
Joanna Lin, CC'26 attended the American Society for Cell Biology Conference in Philadelphia. Her research examines how the body fits an organ as long and complex as the intestine into a limited amount of space, and does so in a reproducible way every time. She studies this problem within the Nerurkar Lab, in the context of early development, and presented this research at the conference.
Maxwell Ma, CC'28 presented his work at the National Institutes of Health U54 Conference in Los Angeles, CA. His research focuses on Glioblastoma, the most common malignant glial brain tumor, with the goal of leading to new and innovative ways to treat the condition.
Ray Wu, CC'28 attended the University of Toronto Trinity-IID Conference in Toronto to present his findings on education reform in Uzbekistan, based on a summer 2025 trip to the country interviewing and documenting the experiences of Uzbeks to create a documentary film.
Columbia College students who have been invited to present their work at a conference can apply for the Columbia College Travel Award for Presenters, with multiple deadlines each academic year.