The Student Innovation and Research Showcase ton April 23, 2026, featured selected projects from across the campus community. 41 visiting expert judges representing 30+ companies from the Silicon Valley ecosystem joined us, each offering their feedback and insight to researchers. We were pleased to count amongst them over a dozen Northeastern alumni from a range of graduation years and fields of study. In addition, 20 students were selected as peer reviewers, and all general admission attendees were given the opportunity to vote for their favorite projects.
The event also featured an opening keynote conversation with Min Du of NVIDIA, a compelling look at how research and development integrates into the tech industry. It was also the first showcase to implement a custom app for judges’ reviews, developed by a faculty-led team of student software engineers.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Min Du is an AI Manager in Enterprise AI at NVIDIA. She sat for a fireside chat with Dean Caroline Simard, sharing fascinating insights from her career. At NVIDIA she is responsible for leading new agentic AI and LLM across multiple initiatives in IT and business operations, balancing the need for fast advancement with the quality and reliability constraints of production-grade enterprise solutions. She previously worked as a principal researcher on machine learning for cybersecurity at Palo Alto Networks, and conducted postdoctoral research in AI security at University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Du’s insights were of particular significance for this event given her own renown as a researcher. She has published in top journals and conferences about AI, security, and privacy. She received the Best Poster Award at SoCC 2017 and the Best Paper Award at ICPE 2022. She was recognized as a Rising Star in EECS in 2019. She has also served on the program committee and organization board of top-tier conferences and workshops.
2026 Award Winners
Research Awards
The Research Awards recognize projects that demonstrate a command of the full research process from concept to execution. These awards honor students who apply the tools and methods of computer science, data science, or artificial intelligence to pursue meaningful questions with technical depth and rigor. Awarded projects go beyond implementation, showing originality in their approach, thoughtfulness in their methodology, and clarity in how findings are communicated and contextualized.
First Prize: Jeval: What is your agent about to forget?
Preethi Shyamsundar. Advisor: Tehmina Amjad
Second Prize: SyncGuard: Contrastive Audio-Visual Deepfake Detection via Temporal Phoneme-Face Coherence
Akshay Prajapati, Atharva Dhumal, Ritik Pankaj Mahyavanshi. Advisor: Akram Bayat
Second Prize: Mechanistic Analysis of Counting Failures in Text-to-Image Models via Patch-Level Sparse Autoencoders
Zhenzhen Qin. Advisor: Nadim Saad
Third Prize: Explainable PCOS Diagnosis
Vasudha Jain, Aisha Abdur Rahim, Isabelle Bedichek, Yue Chen. Advisor: Akram Bayat
Third Prize: V.O.I.C.E. virtual Observation and Interactive Clinical Education: Emotionally Expressive, Agentic Multimodal Virtual Patients for Clinical Simulation.
Yujing Wang, Mingkai Gao, Brandon Watanabe, Zhuoying (Ellen) Xue, Yuqi Hu, Zhenzhen Qin, Fuchao (Rick) Yang, Kunyi Shi, Shreevidhya Shambanna. Advisor: Ilmi Yoon
Third Prize: Forge: A Nimble Learning Platform for Reproducible ML Experiments
Karthik Ravi, Nikhil Davar-Trivedi, Ritik Pankaj Mahyavanshi, Zhiping Li. Advisor: Ilmi Yoon
Discovery Award
This award recognizes projects that move beyond initial exploration into a more defined and intentional concept. It honors students in computing, analytics, or project management who demonstrate a clear idea, thoughtful direction, and early application of skills or research. While still developing in depth or execution, the project shows strong potential and a solid foundation to build upon. This award celebrates the transition from curiosity to purposeful creation.
Multi-Document Academic Summarization Assistant with XAI
Joynae Whitehurst, Yiqing (Robyn) Jiang, Karan Kendre. Advisor: Tehmina Amjad
Seed of Innovation Awards
This award recognizes projects that represent the earliest stages of exploration and idea development. It celebrates students who are beginning to engage with concepts in computing, analytics, or project management, demonstrating curiosity, initiative, and a willingness to experiment. While the project may be simple in scope or still forming, it reflects a genuine interest in problem-solving and learning. This award honors the courage to start and the potential for future growth.
Why do Stocks Move? AI-Driven Anomaly Detection and Price Forecasting
Yuqing Lei, Leijie Tao, Hanwen Wang, Wanjing Yang. Advisor: Nadim Saad
Tracing Misdiagnosis in Therapeutic Dialogue: Applying Influence Functions to LLM-Based Clinical Conversational Systems
Saahithi Mallarapu. Advisor: Nadim Saad
Broadening Participation in Computing Award
The Broadening Participation in Computer Science Award recognizes projects that leverage computer science to advance discovery and equity across disciplines. Eligible projects demonstrate how computing accelerates discovery in any field (STEM, health, business, social sciences, humanities, etc.), and/or, broadens participation by expanding access, addressing barriers, or fostering sustained engagement among historically underrepresented groups in computing.
Forge: A Nimble Learning Platform for Reproducible ML Experiments
Karthik Ravi, Nikhil Davar-Trivedi, Ritik Pankaj Mahyavanshi, Zhiping Li. Advisor: Ilmi Yoon
Why do Stocks Move? AI-Driven Anomaly Detection and Price Forecasting
Yuqing Lei, Leijie Tao, Hanwen Wang, Wanjing Yang. Advisor: Nadim Saad
AgentScope: Trace-Aware Evaluation for Agentic AI Systems
Pegah Zargarian. Advisor: Akram Bayat
HCI Insights on UX in Gamified Algorithm Learning
Emily Huang, Issam Zantout. Advisor: Lama Hamandi
StudyMindAI: Multi-Model, Exam-Oriented Notes from PDF, Audio, and YouTube
Nianchao Wang, Qinyuan Shen. Advisor: Shiva Mathapathi
A custom solution built for evaluating projects
The 2026 event was the first of our annual research showcases to put in place a custom-engineered evaluation application built specifically to handle the parameters of our campus showcases.
Dr. Akram Bayat and a team of student researchers from her Human-Centered AI Lab developed the app. Designed to process in real-time the detailed evaluations from each of our 40+ visiting judges and 20 student judges, it streamlined the judging process. Each participant reviewed their set of projects using a standardized rubric within the app, and the event team was able to quickly and reliably tabulate the results for our awards ceremony.
Alongside the official reviews from judges, the app also collected votes from event attendees about their favorite projects—allowing the crowd favorite to be celebrated as the Huskies’ Choice.
Showcase Evaluation App Development Team
Pictured, left to right: Jianing Wang, Mingrui Li, Bo Pang, Xinyu Li, and Akram Bayat.
2026 Photo Gallery
View photos from the 2026 Student Research Showcase.
Thank you to our expert judges
A crucial part of the Student Research Showcase is the participation of expert judges, who volunteer their time to evaluate student posters. Judges provide detailed evaluations of a set number of projects, which form the basis of the awards selection. Even more crucially, they engage in conversation with each of the research teams that they are assigned (and often many others) offering students valuable insights from experienced technologists in their fields.
The success of this event and the educational impact for the students is thanks to these volunteers.
Northeastern University alumni indicated with *
Hussein Alawieh, Noctrix Health
Jussara Oliveira Barbosa*, Dispatch Goods
Paramita Bhattacharjee, East West Bank
Guru Lakshmi Priyanka Bodagala, University of California San Francisco
Alireza Boloorchi, Catch Up AI
Tom Cheng, Google
Nehru Chevanan, Project Management Institute Silicon Valley
Jocelyn Cloutier, Amazon
Lawrence Dietz*, Tal Global Corporation
Min Du, NVIDIA
Eliot Eshelman, NVIDIA
Lihua Fan, AEHL US LLC
Deepika Gajaria, product management and GTM
Nolwenn Godard, Carbon 2C
Tonya Gromyko, Northeastern University
Abebe Hailu, Seagate
Yuqi Hu*, University of California San Diego
David Hunter*, advisor and investor
Sameer Inamdar*, Clearstory
Sriram Kothandaraman*, Servicenow
Eunji Lee, Google
Priya Mulagada, Adobe
Vikrant Nanda, Figure AI
Thomas Neubert, Transatlantic AI Exchange
Hansraj Haridas Pabbati, Oracle
Mina Park, GAI Insights
Valerie Pilloud, cybersecurity and compliance
Prakasam Haripriya, HCL Tech
Xiao Rui*, Meta
Peter Salmon*, Salmon Engineering
Lama Saouma, Microsoft AI
Nagashree Seshadri*, data and analytics
Shivangi Sharma*, Kinnect
Shivansh Singh*, Amazon
Jeanne Sole*, City of San Jose
Han Hee Song, Apple
Vijay Venkatesan*, software engineer
Xinmeng Wu*, Tesla
Hao Yue, University of California Santa Cruz
Rached Zantout, Northeastern University
Jason Zhang*, Walmart Labs
Student Research in Silicon Valley
In grad school, Mandar Ambulkar cranked up the pressure — and thrived
Up through undergrad, Mandar stayed focus on academics because he understood that as the path to success. In grad school, he started adding more to his plate — and discovered new strengths.
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Student researchers head to Las Vegas to attend CES 2026
Two of the winning teams from the last research showcase brought their projects to the Consumer Electronics Show to make connections and see some of the newest and most cutting edge technology.
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Can computer vision help us send better texts? These student researchers think so
“If the camera could analyze your emotion, and the person you’re talking to can analyze your sentence, taken together maybe people could communicate better," said Qinhao Zhang.
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Students reimagine nurse education using immersive tech: “AI-powered training can fill critical gaps”
“I truly believe that AI-powered training can fill critical gaps in traditional nurse education, making training more comprehensive, realistic, and accessible,” Xiong said.
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Student researchers win award by following their curiosity to Dinic’s algorithm
"That's the best part about these projects – having someone to share your thoughts with, who will be excited about the same things as you,” Chen said.
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This student research team is building Northeastern’s own AI assistant: NUGPT
How Harshika Santoshi, Panchami Laxminarayan Baleri, Rohan Benjamin Varghese, Shreevidhya Shambanna, and Yadhukrishnan Pankajakshan put research into practice in their project building a custom AI assistant for the campus.
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