Student Success • Excellence and Expertise • Research and Innovation

Announcing the CAS Dean's Scholars for the 2026-27 academic year

These 21 students have received expense stipends to work with faculty mentors on independent studies.

Published 6/12/26 • Last updated 6/15/26 11:10:7

Upham Hall from the sky

Student Success • Excellence and Expertise • Research and Innovation

Announcing the CAS Dean's Scholars for the 2026-27 academic year

These 21 students have received expense stipends to work with faculty mentors on independent studies.

Published 6/12/26 • Last updated 6/15/26 11:10:7

Dean Renée Baernstein is proud to announce the selection of the 2026-27 CAS Dean’s Scholars. These ambitious students are rising CAS seniors who have successfully conceived and proposed a project that is endorsed by a faculty mentor.

Students will each receive a $500 professional expense stipend to conduct their independent study, in addition to academic credit. They will present their work at a professional conference and/or Miami's Undergraduate Research Forum next April. In addition, faculty mentors are granted a $500 expense stipend to work with their student on the project.

The 2026-2027 CAS Dean’s Scholars, along with their sponsoring departments, faculty mentors, and project titles are:

Dylan Aubel

Sponsoring Department: Physics

Faculty mentor: Paul Urayama, Ph.D.

Project Title: Construction and Characterization of a UV-Excited Hyperspectral System for Imaging Cellular Metabolism

Isabel Byrd

Sponsoring Department: Political Science

Faculty mentor: Monica Schneider, Ph.D.

Project Title: Secularization Policies and the Impact on Women

Emma Estridge

Sponsoring Department: English

Faculty mentor: Andrew Hebard, Ph.D.

Project Title: Owe My Soul: A Novella of the Mine Wars

Samuel Fulkerson

Sponsoring Department: Anthropology

Faculty mentor: Kelsey Ellis, Ph.D.

Project Title: Interspecies interactions among lowland woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lagotricha poeppigii) in Amazonian Ecuador.

Dominic 'Gio' Giordano

Sponsoring Department: World Languages and Cultures

Faculty mentor: John Jeep, Ph.D.

Project Title: State and Regional Identities of the Federal Republic of Germany. In German: Staatliche und regionale Identitäten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Baron Graham

Sponsoring Department: World Languages and Cultures

Faculty mentor: Mila Ganeva, Ph.D.

Project Title: Coming to Terms with the Past: Revisiting Literature, History, and Politics in Salzburg

Zack Hesselmann

Sponsoring Department: Biology

Faculty mentor: Michael Robinson, Ph.D.

Project Title: Establishing a FOXE3 Expressing 21EM15 Cell Line to Analyze Lens-Specific Regulatory Pathways

Natalie Janssen

Sponsoring Department: Media, Journalism, and Film

Faculty mentor: Phillip Arceneaux, Ph.D.

Project Title: Clandestine Journalism: How Women in Conflict Zones Use Online Media to Navigate Digital Authoritarianism.

Avery Littman

Sponsoring Department: Geology and Environmental Earth Science

Faculty mentor: Mike Brudzinski, Ph.D.

Project Title: Detecting Weak Points in Student Understanding during Assignments with Question-Level Learning Analytics

Kate Louagie

Sponsoring Department: Global and Intercultural Studies

Faculty mentor: Indivaar Jonnalagadda, Ph.D.

Project Title: International Systems Theory and What We Owe to Each Other on a Global Scale

Charlotte Melville

Sponsoring Department: Philosophy

Faculty mentor: Emily Zakin, Ph.D.

Project Title: The Woman Creates

Sam Meola

Sponsoring Department: Philosophy

Faculty mentor: Keith Fennen, Ph.D.

Project Title: Montaigne In Modernity: A post-liberal future identified through the essays of Michel de Montaigne

Peyton Morrow

Sponsoring Department: Biology

Faculty mentor: Katia Del Rio-Tsonis, Ph.D.

Project Title: Role of Metabolism in Salamander Eye Morphogenesis

Harshini Ramesh

Sponsoring Department: Psychiology

Faculty mentor: Jennifer Quinn, Ph.D.

Project Title: The Impact of Perinatal Methadone Exposure, Sex, and Age on the Core Components of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Hyperactivity, Impulsivity, and Attention

Isabelle Reitz

Sponsoring Department: Biology/Microbiology

Faculty mentor: Rimi Chowdhury, Ph.D.

Project Title: Intestinal fatty acids are exploited by Shigella flexneri to optimize virulence strategies

Sanya Scharf

Sponsoring Department: Biology/Microbiology

Faculty mentor: Timothy Wilson, Ph.D.

Project Title: A method of interrogating Fc Receptor-Like protein 1 localization to B Cell Receptor complex

Lillian Shelley

Sponsoring Department: Psychology

Faculty mentor: Allison K. Farrell, Ph.D.

Project Title: Physiological reactivity and stress recovery in women with reproductive disorders

Aiden Sones

Sponsoring Department: Statistics

Faculty mentor: Jing Zhang, Ph.D.

Project Title: Statistical Resilience: Defining the Limits of Statistical Inference in "Messy" Data Environments.

Isaura (Isa) Souza

Sponsoring Department: Western / Individualized Studies

Faculty mentor: Jacqueline (Jacque) Daugherty, Ph.D.

Project Title: Wellbeing and Achievement, Not a Trade Off: Mediators of the Wellbeing-Achievement Relationship

Emma Tibbitts

Sponsoring Department: Anthropology

Faculty mentor: Kelsey Ellis, Ph.D.

Project Title: Does infant sex influence maternal association patterns in wild woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lagoticha poeppiggi)

Anna Wolf

Sponsoring Department: Chemistry and Biochemistry

Faculty mentor: John Alumasa, Ph.D.

Project Title: Elucidating the mechanism of resistance to β-lactam antibiotics conferred by a variant of the mobilized colistin resistance zinc-metalloenzyme (MCR-1-M6)