Research & Professional Development
Learning at Rutgers Graduate School-Camden extend beyond the classroom, creating space for students on our campus to push boundaries and commit to work that matters. This is learning that moves beyond grades – expressed through experiments that work, code that performs, prose that moves, and research that expands what is possible. Students develop capstones, theses, and dissertations as part of this process, refining, testing, and sharing their work in broader academic, creative, and professional spaces, in preparation for what comes next and the possibilities they will continue to pursue.
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Opportunities to Develop & Advance Your Work
Students on our campus engage opportunities that strengthen how their work takes shape and moves forward. Through these experiences, students learn to communicate complex ideas clearly, sustain momentum on long-term projects, secure funding to support their work, and position themselves within broader academic, creative, and professional conversations.
Travel & Research Grants
Funding opportunities that support conference participation, fieldwork, and research-related expenses. These grants allow students to share their work, gather data, and engage with scholars and practitioners in their field.
SPARK! Poster Presentation
An annual showcase of research and creative work from students on our campus. SPARK! creates space to present projects across disciplines, engage with faculty and peers, and contribute to a broader academic conversation.
Dissertation Bootcamp
A structured writing and accountability program designed to help doctoral students make sustained progress on dissertations. Bootcamp provides dedicated time, peer accountability, and a focused environment to move work forward.
Three Minute Thesis (3MT)
A competition where students present their research in three minutes to a broad audience. 3MT challenges students to distill complex ideas, sharpen their message, and communicate their work clearly and confidently.
A Look Back at Research & Creative Works
The SPARK! Graduate Poster Exhibition reflects the range of work developed at Rutgers Graduate School-Camden, from research and creative projects to capstones, theses, and dissertations. Below, you will find past SPARK! projects alongside theses, dissertations, and student capstone work that show how these ideas take shape in and beyond the classroom.
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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
Centers, Institutes & Libraries
At Rutgers Graduate School-Camden, research and professional development are strengthened through access to institutes, centers, and libraries that extend learning beyond the classroom. These spaces support work across disciplines – from the arts and humanities to the social sciences, public policy, law, and science – while connecting students on our campus to Rutgers’ broader network of libraries and research resources across Camden, New Brunswick, Newark, and RU-Online.