For the Fall 2026 semester, the Undergraduate Research Fellowship (URF) committee is awarding 33 undergraduate students with scholarships of up to $1,500.
Top row (from left): Isabel Houle, Jessica Bunting, Ashok Paudel, Sandya Neupane, Arjun Gyawali
Middle row (from left): Mahesh Ghimrie, Hayley Bean, Sam Dunphy-Miller, Sanskriti Thapa, Josh Walker, Fallon Fontenot
Bottom row (from left): Christina Gallegos, Radha Yadav, Bidish Shresthra, Ella Madis, Marguerite Harrison
The Undergraduate Research Fellowships (URF) support undergraduate research and creative projects at Texas State University. Every semester, the URF committee stages a competitive process for students seeking funding for projects such as Honors capstones and independent studies, as well as for original research or scholarly work performed under the supervision of a faculty mentor.
This fall, a total of 33 undergraduate students are receiving the award. The recipients are as follows:
John Walker Baker
Project: Virtual Reality as Educational Tool in Oxyfuel Cutting
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ryan Anderson, Dept. of Agricultural Sciences
Hayley Bean
Project: The Impact of the US's Global Reputation on the Sense of Place in Military Spouses
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Sarah Blue, Dept. of Geography & Environmental Studies
Aavash Bhujel Chhetri
Project: Testing Wireless Channel Estimation Error Correction on a Real-World Testbed
Faculty Mentor: Dr.Charles Wiame, Ingram School of Engineering
Jessica Bunting
Project: Group Hiking May Improve Overall Wellbeing of TXST Students Through Anxiety Reduction
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Priscilla Goble, School of Family and Consumer Sci.
Dylan Carpenter
Project: Finding if a Relationship Exists Between School-Based Agriculture Education Teachers Knowledge to Teach Electricity and Their Ability to Perform Electrical Skills
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ryan Anderson, Dept. of Agricultural Sciences
Samara Clampffer
Project: Regulation of Fe-siderophore Activity in Pseudogymnoascus destructans via MFS/ABC Transport
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ryan Peterson, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Samuel Dunphy-Miller
Project: Quantifying relationships of common water quality parameters with glucocorticoid levels in juvenile bluegill ('Lepomis macrochirus') in Central Texas streams
Faculty Mentor: Caitlin Gabor, Dept. of Biology
Allison Effner
Project: Assessing evolutionary selection for tonic immobility in arboreal and terrestrial anurans
Faculty Mentor: Andrea Aspbury, Dept. of Biology
Fallon Fontenot
Project: Theatre Education Outreach: Examining Student Engagement Through Workshops and Performance
Faculty Mentor: Vlasta Silhavy, Dept. of Theatre and Dance
Christina Gallegos
Project: Written Creative Expression Story: "Little Girl Stay"
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Naomi Coleman Medina, Dept. of Psychology
Sudrit Ghimire
Project: Constructing and Verifying Widely Digitally Delicate Primes
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Hongchi Shi, Dept. of Computer Science
Mahesh Ghimire
Project: Vapor Phase Deposition of Poly(3,4-ethylendioxythiophene) onto Electrospun Commodity Polycaprolactone Nanofibers for Nerve Regeneration
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Tania Betancourt, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Arjun Gyawali
Project: PollenCast Texas
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aniruddha Bora, Dept. of Computer Science
Marguerite Harrison
Project: Solar Sanctuary: A Participatory Geographic Assessment of Faith-Based Institutions as Resilience Hubs for Communities in Travis County, Texas
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Tom Ptak, Dept. of Geography & Environmental Studies
Isabel Houle
Project: How Art Creates an Emotional Response in College Students Learning about the Detrimental Impacts of AI
Faculty Mentor: Mark Hernandez , Dept. of English
Grace Lippert
Project: Characterizing Obesity-Associated Visfatin–Rac1 Signaling Along the Colon–Liver Axis in Colorectal Cancer
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Mona Salcedo-Price, School of Family and Consumer Sci.
Ella Madis
Project: Living Through Art
Faculty Mentor: Sarah Kleinman, School of Art and Design
Sandhya Neupane
Project: Trap-Parameter Extraction and Identifiability Analysis in Perovskite Solar Cells from Current-Voltage Data
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aniruddha Bora, Dept. of Computer Science
Tuan Ngo
Project: Development of a Carbon-Sequestrating Smart Pavement with Radiative Cooling and Phase-Change Thermal Storage for Urban Heat Island Mitigation.
Faculty Mentor: Sujata Mandal, Ingram School of Engineering
Ashok Paudel
Project: Bottom-Up Assembly of DNA-Nanoparticle-Dumbbells for Quantum Bits
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Tania Betancourt, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Prabin Poudel
Project: Evaluating Wide-bandgap Oxide Semiconductors in Packaged Solar-Blind UV Photodetectors
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ming-Hsun Lee, Dept. of Physics
Pawan Pradhan
Project: AI-Enabled Agentic Communication for Intelligent Devices
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aniruddha Bora, Computer Science, Dept. of
Everett Rees-Eissler
Project: Comparative Evaluation of Natural Gum-Based Biodegradable Hydrogels and Commercial Hydrogels for Water Conservation and Energy Reduction in Agriculture
Faculty Mentor: Sujata Mandal, Ingram School of Engineering
Katharina Reyling
Project: Stress, Worry, & Body Signals—What’s the Link?
Faculty Mentor: Amy Weimer, School of Family and Consumer Sci.
Sumit Sah
Project: Adversarial Training of Dark Patterns in LLM-Based Web Agents
Faculty Mentor: Jeremiah Birrell, Dept. of Mathematics
Arriana Salazar
Project: Synergistic effect of combined chemo-photothermal therapy with DOX-loaded conductive polymer nanoparticles in cancer treatment
Faculty Mentor: Tania Betancourt, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Jenna Schultz
Project: Engineering an Advantage: Evaluating the Academic and Workforce Value of Texas FFA's Applied Agricultural Engineering Career Development Event
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ryan Anderson, Dept. of Agricultural Sciences
Bidisha Shrestha
Project: Mapping Silent Risk: Using Near-Miss and Crash Data to Identify EV-Pedestrian Conflict Hotspots
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Subasish Das, Ingram School of Engineering
Saurav Thakur
Project: The Cost of a Handhold, Financing Rock Climbing Infrastructure Without Institutional Capital
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Peter Louis Tschirhart, Honors College
Sanskriti Thapa
Project: Multi-Temporal Satellite and LiDAR Monitoring of Glacier and Surface Changes: A Case Study of the 2026 Langtang Lirung Event
Faculty Mentor: Feng Wang, Ingram School of Engineering
Joshua Walker
Project: Parasocial Breakups on Twitch
Faculty Mentor: Michel Haigh, School of Journalism & Mass Comm.
Radha Yadav
Project: Bridging Human and AI Priorities in Safety-Critical Driving: A Human-Centered Framework for Evaluating Vision-Language Models
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Subasish Das, Ingram School of Engineering
Sonu Yadav
Project: Structural and Hydrodynamic Design of a High-Speed Deep-Sea Drone with an Integrated Debris-Collector
Faculty Mentor: Bingyang Zhang, Ingram School of Engineering
This program is supported by contributions from the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Division of Research, private foundations, and colleges within the university.
