By: Elizabeth Turner
The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center held its 16th annual VKC Science Day on Monday, Oct. 6, at Vanderbilt University’s Student Life Center. More than 120 undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research staff, and faculty members showcased their work among fellow colleagues across Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a record number of presenters for this annual VKC event.
In honor of the VKC’s 60th anniversary, VKC director Jeff Neul, M.D., Ph.D., presented the VKC Science Day Keynote Lecture, “Vanderbilt Kennedy Center: Six Decades of Science, Resilience, and Hope.”
Following the keynote, participants took part in two consecutive poster sessions. During that time, presenters who opted into the Poster Competition met with faculty judges and general attendees and shared their research. Judges then assessed the presenters on their research and presentation skills. All 2025 Science Day presenters are eligible to request up to $250 in travel funding to present at an academic conference in the coming year. Click here to learn more on requesting VKC travel funding.
Afterward, while final scores were being tallied, five Science Day presenters with exemplary abstract submittals participated in the annual VKC Science Day Data Blitz, where they had 7-9 minutes to discuss their research findings with the audience. Below are this year’s selected Data Blitz participants and their poster titles:
- Yinru Long, Clinical/Behavioral/Education/Intervention: “Effects of Daily Friend or Parent Support on Active Suicidal Ideation of Adolescents After a Psychiatric Hospitalization: The Moderating Role of Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) Status” (PI: Autumn Kujawa)
- Rachel Marlowe, Systems Neuroscience: “Neural Responses to Interpersonal Images as Moderators of Associations between Chronic Social Stress and Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety in Adolescents” (PI: Autumn Kujawa)
- Jacob Feldman, Systems Neuroscience: “Audiovisual Multisensory Integration in Autistic and Non-Autistic Youth: Links with Language and Core Autistic Features” (PI: Tiffany Woynaroski)
- Kevin Zhang, Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience: “Targeting Synaptic Timing: A New Therapeutic Strategy for Disorders of Circuit Dysfunction” (PIs: Ege Kavalali & Lisa Monteggia)
- Hrishita Das, (Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience: “A role for the p75NTR - hB7.1 interaction in Alzheimer's disease” (PI: Bruce Carter)
Closing out this year’s Science Day was the announcement of 2025’s winners of the Science Day Research Awards and Poster Competition.
Science Day Research Award winners are selected ahead of Science Day by VKC faculty members of the Science Day Committee to determine the abstract of the highest caliber among their respective themes. Each winner got to take home a prize. Congratulations to this year’s Research Award winners:
- Best Research Featuring Unrepresented or Underrepresented Populations:
- Yinru Long: “Effects of Daily Friend or Parent Support on Active Suicidal Ideation of Adolescents After a Psychiatric Hospitalization: The Moderating Role of Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) Status” (PI: Autumn Kajawa)
- Best Research Employing Community Engagement/Voices of Persons with Lived Experiences:
- Taydi Ray: “How Do Latina Caregivers' Cultural Values Influence Their Beliefs About Early Language Development and Book Sharing? A Qualitative Investigation” (PI: Ann Kaiser)
- Best Demonstration of Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration:
- Alireza Karimi: “Integration of Audiovisual Motion in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortical Neurons" (PIs: Ram Ramachandran & Christos Constantinidis)
The winners of the Science Day Poster Competition are determined by faculty judges visiting the presenters during the poster sessions and scoring the presenters on the quality of their research and strength of their oral presentation. These winners of the Poster Competition have the option of receiving their $250 award as a cash prize or in the form of supplemental travel funds. Congratulations to this year’s Poster Competition winners:
- Undergraduate (Overall):
- Jillian Zhu: “Acute changes in tau pathology and microglia morphology due to sepsis in the P301S Alzheimer's mouse model” (PI: Fiona Harrison)
- Clinical, Behavioral, Education, and Intervention Research:
- Ellen Windham (Graduate): “Predicting postpartum psychopathology using community and individual-level stress indicators” (PI: Autumn Kujawa)
- Systems Neuroscience:
- Adam Tiesman (Graduate): “Behavioral evidence for visually biased audiovisual motion integration in humans” (PI: Mark Wallace)
- Noah Fram (Postdoc): “Rhythm as a prism into predictive coding in autism” (PI: Miriam Lense)
- Cellular/Molecular Neuroscience:
- Genevieve Hunn (Graduate): “Regulation of the GRM7 3'UTR by microRNAs that are dysregulated in Rett syndrome” (PI: Colleen Niswender)
- Rachel Spicer (Postdoc): “Peripheral inflammation Alters Microglial Response to Amyloid Pathology and Increases Amyloid Protein in the APP/PSEN1 model of Alzheimer's Disease” (PI: Fiona Harrison)
Many thanks go to this year’s faculty judges who volunteered their time to participate in the Poster Competition, and the 2025 Science Day Committee members who made this year’s event a success:
- Amy Needham, Ph.D. (Science Day Chair, Undergraduate), Chair and Professor of Psychology and Human Development
- Heather Burrell Ward, M.D. (Systems Neuroscience), Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
- Bill Nobis, M.D., Ph.D. (Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience), Assistant Professor of Neurology
- Andrew Molnar, Ph.D. (Clinical/Behavioral/Education/Intervention Research), Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Click here to view photos taken from 2025 VKC Science Day.
Last Updated: 10/8/2025 10:14:10 AM
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