Congratulations to the 2026 IFER Ethical Research Poster Award Winners

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2026 IFER Ethical Research Poster Awards! These awards recognize outstanding undergraduate and high school students whose research demonstrates innovation, scientific excellence, and a commitment to ethical research practices. Each winner received a $350 award in recognition of their work.

Undergraduate Winners

1. Julia Sullivan, In Vitro Modeling of Military Burn Pit Smoke Exposure Using a 3D Airway Organ Tissue Equivalent (OTE)

2. Gauri Mishra, Investigating the Physiological and Functional Effects of Microgravity on Heart Spheroids

3. Gianna Elie, Development of an In Vitro Assay for Detecting Environmental Chemical-Induced Carcinogenesis

4. Blake Tumpey, Vascularized Endometrium-on-a-Chip for Modeling Reproductive Toxicology

5. Hayeon Yun, Flexible, 3D Electronic Framework for Electromechanical Monitoring and Stretching of Engineered Heart Tissues

High School Winners

1. Bhavya Ramakrishnan, The Effect of miR-1 Loaded Extracellular Vesicles on Combating Neural Cell-Associated Senescence

2. Bhuvan Krishnamohan and Prajval Balakavi (Team), Allosteric Modulation of Dysregulated MMP-1 in OSCC: Structure Based Computational-Experimental Drug Discovery

3. Raina Gu, Characterizing Cellular Senescence Through Integrated Morphological and Epigenetic Profiling

4. Harshitha Smriti Prabakar, Computational Modeling of Multineurotransmitter Perturbations in Mesolimbic Reward Pathway

5. Paxton Kim-Tang, Jacob Wang, and Tina Yu (Team), Real-Time Evaluation of Airway Epithelial Barrier Disruption Induced by Smoking-Related Agents Using Impedance-Based Live-Cell Analysis