SPARK! Graduate Poster Exhibition 2026
Graduate research and creative work take center stage at SPARK! (Showcase of Projects, Art, Research, and Knowledge), uniting the community around projects ranging from prose and code to social science inquiry, scientific discovery, and artistic expression. More details about this reimagined Research Week are coming soon.
TAKE THE NEXT STEP
Submit your 2026 Graduate Creative Flash Talks Application
We are excited to announce that during this year’s SPARK, the Graduate School will celebrate the incredible and imaginative creative work our students are doing! On Tuesday, April 14, from 12:45 to 1:45 pm in the Black Box theater. For more details and to participate, please complete the application.
Submit Your 2026 Poster Exhibition Application
Present your research to the Rutgers–Camden community and share your work publicly. The SPARK! Graduate Poster Exhibition will be held on Tuesday, April 14, from 4:00 to 6:00 PM in the Campus Center Multi-Purpose Room. To participate, complete the application.
Application Deadline
Tues, Mar 24 at 7:00 PM
Notification of Acceptance
Fri, Mar 27 at 5:00 PM
Poster Dropoff Deadline
Tues, Apr 14 at 6:00 PM
Submit Your 2026 Poster Exhibition Application
In the videos below, Assistant Dean Mitch Larson explains the two presentation formats that make up SPARK! (Showcase of Projects, Art, Research, and Knowledge) – the Graduate Poster Exhibition and the Graduate Creative Flash Talks.
These short videos walk through what each format involves, how to participate, and what to expect on the day of the event.
Continued Celebration of Research & Creativity
Revisit 2024, a pivotal year in Rutgers–Camden’s research story. Vice Chancellor for Research Dr. Thomas Risch reflects on the continued evolution of Research Week and the momentum that made it the largest event since 2020. The conversation is led by a Ojobo Agbo Eje, a Data Science M.S. alumnus, now working in Dr. Risch’s office, connecting the student experience to the work behind the scenes.
2025 Graduate Poster Exhibition
The 2025 SPARK! Graduate Poster Exhibition was a powerful reminder of what happens when creativity and rigorous research meet. Across Rutgers Graduate School-Camden, graduate students are modeling climate and economic risk, probing the neural pathways of sociability, rethinking literacy instruction, examining cultural memory and media, advancing forensic science, and exploring what justice and community well-being look like in practice. These projects do more than answer questions – they open new ones, challenge assumptions, and push disciplines forward. As momentum builds toward SPARK 2026, this work stands as both celebration and promise: graduate scholarship here is bold, interdisciplinary, and already shaping the conversations of tomorrow.
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When Democracy Shapes Health Outcomes
Public spending on health is often assumed to produce better outcomes, but the effectiveness of that investment can depend on the political systems that govern how resources are used. This research… continue reading
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Babies as Listeners, Babies as Communicators
Communication is often defined through speech, language, and the ability to articulate thoughts in words. This project challenges that assumption by shifting attention to listening as a relational act that can… continue reading
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When Students Feel Alone in the College Experience
First-generation college students often arrive on campus without the same family experience with higher education that many continuing-generation students have. Navigating academic expectations, campus systems, and support resources can feel isolating,… continue reading
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Tracking How Bacteria Build & Move Sphingolipids
Sphingolipids are well known components of eukaryotic cells, playing important roles in organisms ranging from fungi and plants to animals. In bacteria, however, these lipids appear in only a small number… continue reading
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Using AI to Better Detect Bacterial Gene Promoters
Understanding how bacterial genes are regulated is essential for advances in biotechnology, medicine, and genetic research. One critical element in this process is the σ54-dependent promoter, a regulatory sequence that influences… continue reading
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Searching for Melatonin Signaling in a Model Fungus
Melatonin is best known for its role in regulating sleep and circadian rhythms, but the molecular pathways through which it operates are not yet fully understood. Researchers continue to explore how… continue reading
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Engineering Smarter DNA for Sharper Detection
DNA is more than a genetic blueprint. In the right configuration, it can function as a catalytic tool for detecting disease-related molecules with high precision. This project focuses on designing and… continue reading
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Building Conceptual Understanding in Online Spanish
How do students truly understand grammatical concepts in a second language, especially in a remote asynchronous classroom? This project reimagines how Spanish preterite and imperfect tenses are taught by shifting away… continue reading
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When Schools Close, What Happens to a Community?
School closures do not only affect classrooms. They reshape neighborhoods, displace families, and alter the social fabric of entire communities. This case study examines the widespread closure of public schools in… continue reading
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Finding Hidden Structure in Protein Sequences
Not all proteins reveal their function through visible structure alone. Some must be understood directly from their sequence. This project introduces a computational framework for identifying meaningful modular regions within protein… continue reading
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Turning Ad Impressions Into Measurable Impact
Every digital advertisement generates data: impressions, clicks, conversions, and user engagement signals. But which ads actually cause someone to act? This project builds a real-time system that captures advertising interactions as… continue reading
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Sleep & Healing After Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant
Hospital survival rates for pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients have improved dramatically over the past several decades. Yet survival is only part of the story. During the peri-transplant period, children… continue reading
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Learning to Read Through Sight, Sound, & Movement
Reading begins long before children pick up their first book. In this project, Evelyn Fernandez explored how multisensory phonemic awareness activities can strengthen early literacy skills in preschool students, particularly those… continue reading
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Women, Power, & Economic Change in Puerto Rico
Women in Puerto Rico graduate from universities at higher rates than men, yet they continue to earn less, hold fewer executive roles, and face persistent structural barriers, including high rates of… continue reading
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Where Cold Creates Power: The Ice Worm Advantage
Most organisms slow down in the cold. Glacier ice worms do the opposite. Living on permanent ice, these organisms generate unusually high levels of adenosine triphosphate, the molecule that powers nearly… continue reading
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Maybe It Was Loneliness That Killed the Dinosaurs
What if extinction was not caused by catastrophe, but by isolation? This creative manuscript explores loneliness, difference, and belonging through a linked collection of short stories centered on misfits from the… continue reading
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Innocence, Insight, & the Politics of Childhood
What happens when children watch politics unfold on television? And what does it mean when adults watch children react to it? This project examines how childhood and politics intersect in the… continue reading
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The Psychology of What We Value
What people value shapes how they live, connect, and cope. This research explored how educational background and perceived social status influence whether individuals prioritize self-focused values such as power and achievement… continue reading
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Modeling Water Transport Across Spider Egg Sac Membranes
Can a porous membrane reduce water loss without blocking essential gas exchange? That question sits at the center of research exploring how organisms regulate moisture across biological surfaces. This project examined… continue reading
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Stabilizing DNA Amplification for Degraded Samples
Forensic DNA analysis depends on reliable amplification, but degraded or trace samples often limit the effectiveness of traditional methods. This poster examined whether Catalytic Hairpin Assembly, an enzyme-free and isothermal DNA… continue reading
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Finding Meaning, Finding Help
Growth often begins with a single decision: reaching out. Yet for many students, asking for help remains one of the most difficult steps to take. Ethan Trieu’s research explores how strengthening… continue reading
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Modeling Climate & Economic Risk in Alaska’s Salmon Industry
Alaska supplies roughly 80 percent of North America’s wild-caught salmon, making the industry both an ecological cornerstone and a major economic driver for the state. This poster examined how climate change… continue reading
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The Payphone: Public Space, Nostalgia, & Obsolescence
The payphone, once a fixture of public life, now sits at the edge of cultural memory. This poster examined what might happen if a fully functioning payphone were reintroduced into a… continue reading
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How the Brain Turns Down Fear to Turn Up Connection
Why do some neural signals increase our willingness to engage socially while others reinforce fear and avoidance? This project explores how a specific receptor, sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 3 (S1PR3), may regulate the… continue reading
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Mapping the Neural Pathways of Sociability
Impairments in social behavior are a hallmark of many psychiatric disorders, yet the neural mechanisms that regulate sociability remain incompletely understood. What if activating a specific receptor in the brain could… continue reading
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Summer Bridge & the Science of Student Persistence
First-generation college students now make up more than half of undergraduate enrollees nationwide, yet they continue to graduate at lower rates than their continuing-generation peers. Financial strain, limited access to academic… continue reading
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Geocriticism & Trauma Theory in Contemporary Television
Peaky Blinders, the BBC television series set in post–World War One Birmingham, follows the rise of the Shelby crime family as they navigate political unrest, organized crime, and the psychological aftermath… continue reading
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What Does the Right to the City Look Like in Camden?
How can residents claim a “right to the city” in places long defined by distress and persistent poverty? This research examined community well-being in Camden, New Jersey, using a mixed-method framework… continue reading
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Making Explainable Decision Trees Faster & More Accessible
Balancing model accuracy with interpretability remains a central challenge in machine learning, particularly for classification tasks involving large datasets and continuous variables. This work examined how optimal sparse decision tree frameworks… continue reading
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Race, Power, & Pedagogy: The Bluest Eye & Get Out
Debates over censorship, curriculum, and literary value continue to shape how certain texts are taught in U.S. classrooms. This work examined why The Bluest Eye remains both contested and essential, focusing… continue reading
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Using Light to Trigger Drug Release in Nano-Polymersomes
Controlling when and where drugs are released inside biological systems remains a central challenge in targeted therapy. This work investigated how light-responsive nano-polymersomes could enable precise, on-demand cargo release by using… continue reading
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Automating Custom Loss Functions in Deep Learning
Designing and training deep learning models often requires advanced expertise, particularly when defining loss functions, optimizers, and model architectures. This work explored how large language models could lower those barriers by… continue reading
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Exploring Memory, Protest, & Power Through Fiction
A buried history, a campus in upheaval, and a relationship under strain shape Lux et Lex, a novel in progress as of April 2025. Set at a fictional liberal arts college,… continue reading