Widener’s Summer Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (SURCA) program offers undergraduate students hands-on, faculty-mentored research experience over the summer. The work culminates in the annual SURCA Symposium where students present their work and are scored by a panel of faculty and staff judges.

The 2026 SURCA Symposium winners are:

Biochemistry/Molecular Biology/Biomedical Engineering
"Effect of substrate stiffness on localization of Yes-associated protein (YAP) in adipocytes"
Rayanna Jarrett, Faculty mentor: Dr. Likang Chin

Biology/Environmental Science A
"Revealing the chemical scent profile of Orontium aquaticum in relation to odorous relative Symplocarpus foetidus using GC-MS"
Jaheara Brown, Faculty mentor: Dr. Kate Goodrich

Biology/Environmental Science B
"Exploring short-term memory olfactory responses in 3^rd instar Drosophila applying odor-heat associated paradigm"
Karr Small, Faculty mentor: Dr. Loretta Williams

Business/Humanities
"Simulated knowledge: Understanding LLM epistemology to improve human use of AI tools"
Kennedy Macintosh, Faculty mentor: Dr. Thomas Wilk

"Reaching soccer fans in the U.S.: Recruitment mapping a multi-country study of women's and men's national soccer teams"
Jane Ogbonna, Faculty mentor: Dr. Maria Luiza Pinho

Chemistry/Chemical Engineering
"Synthesis and characterization of mixed oxidation state phosphaplatins"
Lanise Brown, Faculty mentor: Dr. Rob Mishur

Engineering
"Robot sparse array wideband beamforming under gaussian noise using learned covariance matrix restoration"
Amine Lotfi, Faculty mentor: Dr. Sayed Ali Hamza

Math/Computer Science A
"Evaluating the effects of resampling techniques for fraud detection"
Falilou Balde, Faculty mentor: Dr. Suk-Chung Yoon

Math/Computer Science B
"Cross reality retail"
Zachariah Neff, Faculty mentor: Dr. Suk-Chung Yoon

Sociology/Social Science A
"Uniting to disunite: Intra-ethnic mobilization and the Berbers of Algeria"
Jasmine Ayadi, Faculty mentor: Dr. Jeremy Backstrom

Sociology/Social Science B
"Developing a manuscript on ghosting and reconnection: Examining ghosters' perceptions"
Kadie Kutlus and Georgia Seherlis, Faculty mentor: Dr. Maureen Coyle

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