Animating the Mechanism of Action of the Novel Glioblastoma Vaccine Survaxm

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a deadly type of malignant brain tumor affecting over 11,000 people in the United States each year. Treatment options for GBM are limited, with the majority of patients receiving surgery and chemoradiation, and surviving around 15 months. New therapies are desperately needed. A novel peptide vaccine, SurVaxM, has shown promise in phase I and II clinical trials, and is currently under investigation in a Phase IIb trial (the “SURVIVE” trial) for newly diagnosed GBM. As SurVaxM moves closer to FDA approval, there is a need for education about the agent and how it works. In order to provide this information to various audiences (patients, caregivers, doctors, scientists, investors and pharmaceutical reps), an animated video was created. Assets were constructed in ZBrush and Cinema 4D, and molecular models were obtained from RCSB Protein Data Bank and modified in Chimera X. A human brain was modeled using MRI images reconstructed in Slicer software. Animation was done in Cinema 4D and rendered using Redshift, and compositing was done in Adobe After Effects. The finished product is a two minute-long video which provides a narrated overview of SurVaxM’s construction and mechanism of action in the body, with animations illustrating the narrated concepts. The completed video was posted on the home page of the main SURVIVE trial sponsor, Mimivax, www.mimivax.com, and also shared on Twitter and Linkedin by Mimivax’s CEO, Dr. Michael Ciesielski

A PROTOTYPE HIGH POWER DC-DC CONVERTER FOR REGULATING GENERATOR OUTPUT VOLTAGE IN A SERIES HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLE

As fully electric and hybrid electric vehicles become more commonplace, a strong incentive for innovation in electric powertrain technology has been created. Though the instantaneous power available from an electric motor may appeal to consumers of powersports vehicles, this has been an area with relatively little advancement towards electric architectures. One primary concern of electrifying such a platform is the need for large battery packs that tend not to perform well in the harsh weather conditions often seen in powersports such as snowmobiling. As such, hybrid electric architectures may prove to be a successful middle ground between fossil fuels and electric drive systems. This paper presents a design of a high-power voltage regulator circuit designed to decouple control systems for the internal combustion and electric halves of a novel hybrid electric snowmobile powertrain. An overview of design considerations, software development, and testing procedures is given with the intention of providing a foundation for future projects improving upon the prototype snowmobile. Additionally, the design and testing of a prototype printed circuit board (PCB) implementing the proposed solution is discussed with a focus on the selection of components and layout considerations. Regrettably, a catastrophic hardware failure impeded the complete testing of the designed circuit, but a plethora of useful information regarding the design process and control theory of the proposed system was obtained

Fantasy Exchange

Fantasy Exchange is a visual and written examination of the perpetuation of violence against women and the influence it has on the performance of femininity within structural patriarchy. After briefly working with the Rochester Police Department in Rochester, New York, I found myself incredibly struck by the everyday violence that I was made to watch people endure. During my time there, I made note of everything I witnessed and noticed the way that women\u27s pain always seemed to have such a profound impact on me. Through image and text, this body of work explores visual metaphors of abuse found in everyday life using self-portraiture and performance. Through the process of building this body of work, I examine my own tendency to alter my performance of femininity in order to keep my own self-fantasy alive. Among these images are photographs of a woman discovering herself in a new landscape free from the hyper-sexualization of the feminine nude in which one can explore their body without the constraint of performance for the male gaze

Integrating the Seven Stages of Conocimiento with Nahuatl and Ralámuri Wisdom in Kosmic Feminism: My Creative Writer Identity.

This paper explores the intersection of Kosmic Feminism and the seven stages of conocimiento as outlined by Gloria Anzaldúa, integrating Indigenous wisdom from Nahuatl and Ralámuri traditions. It examines how decolonial thought, feminist theory, and creative writing can be transformative tools for personal and communal healing. Drawing on personal experiences rooted in the borderlands of Ciudad Juárez-El Paso and Rarámuri heritage, the author blends Anzaldúa’s framework of conocimiento with Indigenous perspectives to offer a critique of patriarchal systems and a vision of holistic, cosmic resistance. The seven stages of conocimiento—awakening (El Arrebato), liminality (La Nepantla), commitment (El Compromiso), healing (La Herida Abierta), and spiritual activism (Shifting Realities)—serve as guiding principles for navigating the complexities of identity, trauma, and resistance, with a particular focus on the power of creative expression to disarticulate patriarchal language. Through the lens of Kosmic Feminism, this work challenges traditional narratives of forgiveness and justice, proposing a radical, active form of spiritual activism that reconnects personal, communal, and cosmic dimensions of healing. The paper ultimately invites readers to envision a decolonial, feminist future where transformation is both individual and collective, and where the written word becomes a powerful act of resistance and reclamatio

Mundane, ordinary and eerie undertones

When people encounter fear and uncertainty, their mental and physical reactions can vary. Drawing from my personal experience and the ‘Uncanny Valley’ theory [2], I explore various materials and juxtapose ordinary elements with unsettling imagery. In this project, I focus on donuts, transforming them by adding surreal details to imbue them with eerie undertones. For example, in one of my works, a delicious-looking donut appears perfectly normal at first glance. When viewers have a close look at the donut, its surface is crawling with worms, creating an unsettling contrast between the familiar and the disturbing. By altering these familiar items, I seek to evoke a sense of unease and fascination, prompting viewers to reconsider the emotional weight of everyday objects

My Two Bodies

My Two Bodies examines the intersection of visibility, memory, and gendered absence through photographic and material strategies. Engaging with censorship and instability of the image, it investigates how realities are shaped by what is seen, obscured, or erased. Referencing the gendered absence of women in Iranian visual culture, the project considers how censorship intensifies rather than eliminates visibility. Drawing from Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, absence is approached not as a void but as an active presence that disrupts the surface of the image. Through processes such as collage, projection, and fabric-based image making, photographs are treated as tactile, mutable objects. Material in this project functions as a conduit for physical connection with images, challenging the separation between vision and touch, reconsidering how absence is materially and sensorially experienced

Towards Vision Intelligence-Based Liver Surgery

Despite advancements in surgical interventions, modern procedures still heavily rely on surgeons\u27 expertise, requiring extensive training while maintaining limited accuracy. Although image guidance systems have been developed, “GPS-like” surgical navigation systems have yet to become standard practice due to their high costs and accuracy limitations. This thesis aims to enhance surgical navigation and mitigate some of its current limitations by leveraging vision intelligence: integrating image processing, modeling, and computer vision to extract rich, underlying information from images. The key to achieving these improvements lies in improving surgical perception, which involves understanding the spatial relationships between the endoscopic camera, surgical instruments, and surgical targets. This research contributes to four fundamental vision tasks for surgical navigation: depth perception, endoscope tracking, surgical instrument identification and segmentation, and registration of pre- and intraoperative data. Traditional depth perception methods struggle with featureless tissue surfaces, while learning-based approaches often require ground truth depth, which is difficult to obtain. Additionally, learning-based methods may lack robustness in cross-domain applications, and endoscopic images with calibrated camera parameters are rare. To address these challenges, we introduce an unsupervised optical flow-based depth estimation method for stereo endoscopes, eliminating the need for ground truth depth and camera calibration during training. Furthermore, a disparity framework is proposed, incorporating physical constraints and learning-based priors to enhance the accuracy of depth estimation in cross-domain settings. Endoscopic imaging features a limited field of view, making it difficult to track the camera pose and accurately align intraoperative point clouds from different perspectives. While hardware-based tracking systems provide potential solutions, they require additional instrumentation and add invasiveness. To overcome these limitations, this work proposes a hybrid framework that combines learning-based dense depth estimation with visual odometry, enabling precise endoscope tracking and surgical scene reconstruction. State-of-the-art methods for surgical instrument identification and segmentation depend on supervised learning with pixel-level dense annotations, which are labor-intensive to obtain. To reduce annotation dependency, in this thesis we explore a scribble-based, weakly supervised approach that serves as a precursor to more efficient and scalable surgical instrument segmentation. Lastly, existing image-guided surgery systems rely on manually performed rigid registration, which is both error-prone and time-consuming. To improve registration accuracy and efficiency, this work investigates the use of learning-based feature descriptors for automatic rigid registration. Beyond rigid registration, non-rigid registration is critical for correcting tissue deformations and ensuring accurate mapping of preoperative structures, such as tumors and vessels, to intraoperative scenes. To this end, we propose a biomechanical-model-based non-rigid registration method that offers a simplified formulation, simple hyperparameter choosing, and improved accuracy, all without requiring manual interaction. This research advances the integration of vision intelligence into surgical navigation and addresses key challenges in surgical perception, paving the way for more accurate, cost-effective, and accessible image-guided surgery systems

Access to Justice for Deaf Defendants

Deaf individuals face systemic accessibility within the criminal justice system, which emphasizes the importance of the gaps in accommodations by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Inconsistent legal protection, limited access to interpreters, inadequate training for legal professionals, and a lack of technology resources obstruct effective communication for Deaf individuals. As a result, it prohibits achieving an effective and equitable legal outcome. This research paper will examine case studies, legal frameworks, and academic literature to highlight the critical need for reform, including mandatory Deaf culture training, standardized interpreting qualifications, and more resources to enable equitable access to justice

Peach Street

Peach Street connects to the universal phenomenon of losing innocence of childhood and navigating the perils and disappointments of the adult world and visualizes my ongoing experience with anxiety and what psychiatrists call derealization, the feeling of being detached from reality. Set in the same location as where I first felt immense panic, my photos create a fictional narrative where a small town, its residents, and the environment are being controlled by a force emanating from the town’s lake. The lake’s aura blinds the residents to its control, forcing them to live in a set way without personal expression or a desire to escape. The protagonist is a nameless girl, played by me, who lives on Peach Street and becomes aware of the lake’s effect and starts to reflect on why she is living this way. Because of her unreliable perception of the world, she must dissect what is real and what is illusion. As she looks closer at the details of her surroundings, she realizes that maybe her own internalized anxiety was the monster all along