Applying Directed Evolution to Improve Gamillus Luminescent Biosensors

With the ongoing battle against antibiotic resistance, scientists must find a way to develop improved treatments against bacterial infections as bacteria continues to quickly evolve. Many antibiotic and bacterial studies are conducted using bioluminescent proteins that can function as biosensors. These biosensors are crucial to the efficient and accurate detection of certain analytes in a solution. Our research resides in the improvement of these biosensors, specifically the Gamillus fluorescent protein. To improve these biosensors, we will be facilitating directed evolution onto the proteins and selecting for the optimal traits which we observe. With this approach, we will improve the sensitivity and specificity of these fluorescent biosensors

Exploring comics fandom and the book arts through the practice of comic book binding

In this poster, we explore the niche but growing practice of comic book binding, wherein fans consolidate multiple “floppy” comic books into a single bound volume, transforming both the physical artifact and the reading experience. Using surveys and interviews, we hope to shed light on the motivations behind this practice, its perceived benefits, the formal and experiential elements of comics that may be compromised or enhanced in the binding process, and readers’ organizational and creative contributions in the binding process, such as reader-contributed title pages, tables of contents, and cover designs. The survey addresses how fans began the practice of comic book binding, the types of comics they bind, factors that determine the design of a bound book, and alterations to the comics in the binding process. We share the preliminary results from our study and future plans for investigating the practice of comic book binding, a phenomenon that intersects with fandom, collecting, preservation, book studies, and personal creativity

ENSURING EQUITABLE OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE HOW BLIND STUDENTS CONCEPTUALIZE THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

Thesis (Ed.D.) - Indiana University, Department of Curriculum and Instruction/School of Education, 2025This study explored the impact of online explicit-reflective instruction on visually impaired students’ conceptions of the Nature of Science (NOS). Blind and low vision students enrolled in grades K-12 were recruited to participate in a six-week, online, Saturday science program during which they engaged in tactile NOS activities and received explicit-reflective NOS instruction. In order to assess the students’ understandings of various NOS aspects, students completed the Views of Nature of Science (VNOS) questionnaire, pre- and post-NOS instruction. Additional qualitative data were obtained from weekly exit slips, the students’ verbal commentary, semi-structured interviews, and a teaching journal kept by the instructor of the science program. The study participants, as a whole, were shown to hold a majority of inadequate views on the various aspects of NOS prior to receiving any explicit-reflective NOS instruction. However, results showed that after receiving explicit-reflective NOS instruction, the students were able to improve their understandings of the creative, empirical, subjective, and tentative aspects of NOS, as well as being able to distinguish between the scientific processes of observation and inference. Results also indicated that the students found science to be fun and were willing and able to actively engage in adapted NOS activities. Based upon these findings, it is imperative that researchers identify ways to provide blind and low vision students with equitable and inclusive opportunities to comprehend NOS ideas as a means to increase their scientific literacy and to make informed decisions about the world around them

Personal, Social, and Historical Applications of the Family Photo Archive

Family photographs can aid in memory recall and have personal value, but the historical and social information that can be found in them is just as invaluable

A Mathematician’s Take on Ethnomusicology Modeling of Protest Music Transmission and Cultural Memory using Stochastic Partial Differential Equations and Non-Linear Dynamics

Protest music functions both as artistic expression and as a vehicle for collective identity and memory in social movements. Songs born out of resistance often spread across communities and generations, helping to sustain the movements’ ideals and preserving historical memory of struggles. Understanding how protest songs propagate through space and time, and how they evolve within cultural contexts, calls for a rigorous framework that can capture dynamical and stochastic aspects of this diffusion. In this paper, I develop a theoretical framework using Stochastic Partial Differential Equations (SPDEs) and dynamical systems theory to model the transmission and evolution of protest music. This approach treats the spread of songs akin to a propagating wave or diffusive process on a cultural landscape, subject to nonlinear feedbacks (from social reinforcement) and random perturbations (due to unpredictable social events). I leverage concepts such as attractors, Lyapunov stability, bifurcation theory, stochastic resonance, and symbolic dynamics to analyze the model’s behavior. My goal is to reveal structural insights into how protest music contributes to sociopolitical movements and cultural memory, providing quantitative measures for phenomena that ethnomusicologists have observed qualitatively – e.g. the way songs “have work to do” in coordinating and unifying communities and how they serve as repositories of cultural memory . I begin by formulating a general SPDE model for the spatiotemporal transmission of protest songs. I then introduce relevant dynamical-systems definitions (attractors, stability, etc.) and analytical tools to study this model. Existing results from the literature on cultural and linguistic diffusion are incorporated to ground my approach: for example, prior works have used PDEs to model information or language spread in social systems . I adapt such methods to the domain of music and resistance. Formal propositions are stated to characterize the stability of musical traditions and the conditions for their persistence or extinction. Next, I apply the framework to a detailed case study – the role of contemporary Tamil protest music in preserving the legacy of the Tamil Eelam struggle – demonstrating how the abstract model can illuminate real-world cultural dynamics. Finally, I discuss how this mathematical formalism can advance ethnomusicology by offering predictive insight into music as a dynamic carrier of resistance, identity, and memory

Using the IU Research Desktop for Interactive Supercomputing

Robert Henschel is the Engagement Architect for the Research Engagement directorate in Research Technologies. He is responsible for working with IU faculty and research teams to facilitate the efficient use of IU’s High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and reduce time to science. Henschel has more than 20 years of experience in High Performance Computing, and his research interests focus on performance analysis of parallel applications and broadening adoption of HPC systems across all fields of science. Henschel has led the development of IU’s Research Desktop, which makes it easier for inexperienced users to get started with HPC and has allowed the university to leverage powerful compute and storage resources to serve a broad user base.Indiana University has a long history of providing High Performance Computing (HPC) services to all faculty, students and staff free of charge. This includes access to HPC systems like Quartz, Big Red 200, Jetstream and a high performance desktop service called Research Desktop (RED). RED provides students and researchers access to graphical applications, in a highly interactive fashion. The system has been designed to lower the barrier of entry and broaden adoption of traditional supercomputing resources. While the service provides all the normal HPC command line tools and allows for job submission to HPC systems, it is designed for users to run computationally demanding applications like MATLAB, Schrödinger, R-Studio and Jupyter right on the desktop. RED provides users with an environment that looks familiar to what they know from Microsoft Windows or Mac OSX, while offering the storage and compute resources of an HPC system. The Research Desktop allows for running applications for days and even weeks, as well as disconnecting and re-connecting to a session, making it easy for users to start and monitor long running computational workflows. The service has been available to IU faculty, students and staff for over 7 years. This talk will give an overview of RED and will outline common use cases like running Jupyter Notebooks, R-Studio or Matlab. RED will be compared to the other HPC systems available to IU users like Quartz and Big Red 200. There will be time for Q&A as well as a live demonstration of RED

Keynote: Who Owns Our Knowledge? Scholar-Led Infrastructures and the Future of Publishing

IU's Open Access Week 2025 Keynote by Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin (Simon Fraser University; Public Knowledge Project) What would happen if Google Scholar were to vanish tomorrow? For many researchers, it has become the default gateway to academic literature, yet its dominance also exposes vulnerabilities in how knowledge is discovered and accessed. This presentation will discuss how the proliferation of open access journals, led by scholars and published out of universities from around the world, is challenging publishing models, reshaping access to knowledge, and redefining the global landscape of scholarly communication. It concludes with a call to strengthen and sustain scholar-led publishing infrastructures—so that access to knowledge is secured by the academic community itself, not left at the mercy of corporate platforms

SONGS OF TOM CIPULLO (2020 - 2023): A LESSON IN MUSIC, AT SPRING'S END, & AUBADE WITH A CHANCE OF RAIN

Thesis (DM) – Indiana University, Music, 202