Image of Research

Items

• Beam of Inquiry
  Scientific discovery begins with attention. This illustration represents research as a beam of inquiry: focused, intentional, and guided by human curiosity, illuminating unseen spaces where understanding is formed. My research at the U examines how viruses evolve at the molecular level as they move between animal and human hosts, a process that unfolds at scales invisible to the unaided eye yet capable of shaping global public health outcomes. Like the figure guiding illumination toward the microscope, researchers choose where to focus amid incredible uncertainty; this act reflects how scientific discovery depends on intentional questioning, persistence, and the decision to look closer. In this image, the scientist’s use of a magnifying glass to examine a towering microscope emphasizes that discovery often requires layers of looking, attention directed not only at the subject of study, but also at the tools, questions, and assumptions that shape what we are able to see. By illuminating only the microscope while the rest of the scene, including the scientist, remains in darkness, the image reflects how scientific understanding emerges through deliberate focus amid the unknown. The beam symbolizes curiosity and persistence in science: the repeated act of looking closer until patterns emerge and knowledge takes shape.
• The messengers to the soul
  Under the microscope, the mouse eye, subject of my research, glows in brilliant red and white. The retinal ganglion cell marker in white traces a constellation across the retina, and in red, Nr2f1, a protein expressed in retinal progenitor cells, the mother cells that give rise to the entire retina. I search for transcription factors that, in concert with many other factors, bias the fate of mother cells to generate the perfect number of daughter cells at the right time and place. These factors are like a whisper to the progenitor cells, commanding their fate in a sea of possibilities. The stained eye is a record of those whispers, showing that identity comes from the influence of space, timing, and context. Each retinal ganglion cell is both the outcome and the question of these instructions. Why is this cell here and now? In pursuing the answer to this question, I am not just mapping development; I am watching choice take form from layered influenced progenitors. One neuron at a time. Each one is singular and connects what we see to our brains, becoming the true messengers of light, carrying sight into thought, opening the world into our souls, bearing news of colors and shadows.
• Molecular Mechanisms of Synapse Formation
  My video is a one-hour time-lapse of cultured neurons acquired with a confocal microscope. The green/white coloring is a fluorescent molecule used to mark developing synapses. The magenta is a fluorescent fusion of Kirrel3, a cell adhesion molecule involved in synapse formation.
• Not All Borders Look the Same
  Borders are often imagined as uniform lines on a map, yet they are lived as a hierarchy of mobility. This composite image juxtaposes three distinct border experiences: the “invisible” border of air travel into the United States, the orderly land crossing between the United States and Canada, and the fortified barrier along the U.S.–Mexico border. As a graduate student studying international affairs and a Designated School Official (DSO) working with international students, I observe firsthand how U.S. immigration policy produces unequal access to movement based on nationality, documentation, and perception. By placing these borders side by side, this image reveals that “the border” is not a single place, but a system of political and social control embedded in infrastructure and policy. These photographs challenge viewers to consider how privilege and perception dictate whether the American entry experience is felt as a gateway of welcome or a wall exclusion.
• When Colors Whisper: The Ethics of Looking
  This image of muddy hands gathered in a circle reflects my research on care, silence, and the representation of people of color. The scene visualizes a form of collective care, harmony, and unity. By presenting the hands in a single, mud-smeared unified color and omitting faces, the image suspends the visual hierarchies through which bodies are normally categorized, compared, and valued. Color here whispers rather than shouts, refusing the racialized legibility that often structures attention and value. The mud blurs boundaries between bodies, creating a moment of care and fairness that is non-hierarchical and shared, inviting the ethics of looking rather than spectacle. In relation to my research on Saidiya Hartman’s practice of critical fabulation, this image does not attempt to make a spectacle or bold resistance; there is a lingering silence. It emphasizes attention as a form of care—one that lingers with material presence, honors what cannot be fully expressed, and resists the normalization of certain assumptions that come with colors that categorize us.
• Biological Signatures of Early Life Experiences
  Why do some people thrive, while others succumb to the effects of their experiences? A mountain of research suggests that experiences during the first few years of life can alter key biological systems in ways that promote or disrupt healthy development. This image captures a very small window of the dips and peaks in heart rate variability (HRV)—a dynamic, biological signal that reflects the fluctuations in time between consecutive heartbeats—in a 7-month old baby during a stressful laboratory task with their caregiver. Relative to a lower HRV, a higher HRV reflects a greater capacity to adapt to environmental challenges. These patterns of functioning in this context are not transient, however. The body is thought to continuously fine-tune key biological systems in response to early experiences. Research from our lab suggests that early experiences with caregivers, specifically, meaningfully predict patterns of HRV by the time children are 18 months old. Visualizing HRV in this way highlights how early life experiences can leave a lasting biological “signature” that impacts later health, cognition, and development more broadly.
• The Research That Grows Between Us
  This image is a reflection of how research knowledge is made in relationship. Constantly building and growing, reforming with every conversation you have, every participant you meet, every analysis you make. Communally weaving and creating connections throughout classrooms, buildings, departments, and countries. While my primary focus is couples and romantic relationships, clinical psychology training is inherently communal: learning unfolds through proximity, conversation, and care. In classrooms, labs, and shared code files, I encounter the questions my peers ask and the populations they hold close. Their work becomes part of my own. The visual elements of my piece reflect this collective landscape. Eye-tracking paths trace how we visually and mentally make sense of the world. Conversations between partners give us insight to the uninterpretable pattern of love. Sleep actigraphy signals the quiet labor of nights spent coding and re-coding rhythms of rest and disruption. EEG graphs echo the constant background hum of cognition, emotion, and interpretation. These methods coexist, overlap, and inform one another, just as researchers do. Rather than isolating a single project, this piece honors relational science as lived practice: knowledge created not in isolation, but through sustained engagement, mutual influence, and shared intellectual intimacy.
• Designing for Health, Designing for People
  This image represents the lived experiences of using digital health applications designed to promote healthier behaviors. While these applications are often affordable and accessible for low-income individuals and families living with obesity, the high volume of options, reminders, and tasks can create decision fatigue that limits sustained engagement. This study examines the barriers and enablers influencing the use of digital health apps, emphasizing how factors such as food literacy, self-efficacy, and diet and exercise planning skills affect their use. Designing interventions that go beyond access alone requires an understanding of these lived experiences. This study will aim to implement more equitable, responsive interventions in the community that meet people where they are and adjust them by integrating digital tools with appropriate in-person or virtual support systems.
• From Farm to Freezer to Pharmacy: The 21st Century’s Cryoprotectant
  Freezer preservation is the long-time status quo for prolonging the storage of biological material. This simple process is easily accessible to physicians, scientists, restaurant workers, or any home cook. However, the formation of ice crystals within frozen biological mass can cause serious structural or biochemical damage. In a household setting, this could materialize as freezer burn, while a clinical example could be the destruction of sensitive biological therapeutics. My Ph.D. work focuses on developing a novel cryoprotectant that can alleviate this ice-induced damage, ushering in a new era of cryopreservation. This widely applicable, cheap-to-produce material slows the formation of large ice crystals, as shown in the center of the image. Surrounding the ice crystal images are examples to showcase the various applications in which this cryoprotectant could be utilized. Vegetables with high water content, biological pharmaceuticals, and cellular cryopreservation are all potential targets. Beyond this, we are exploring its application as a solubility enhancer, a desperately needed tool in the era of insoluble drugs. Science is a uniquely creative process, and I aimed to capture the frantic day-to-day of a Ph.D. student through the medium of the collage itself, as well as post-its strewn throughout the image and a diverse mix of angles and shapes.
• Before Stability Slips
  This image captures how I think about glycemic regulation as a dynamic system that evolve over time. Many of these changes are so subtle that they go unnoticed until they begin to accumulate. The spiral staircase reflects that unfolding path, which is layered and constantly in motion. At the center of the system sits a quiet thermostat, a reminder of the body’s setpoint and the steady feedback loops that work in the background to keep things balanced. My research explores the dynamic system processes that support this stability and how they evolve as people move through development. I am especially interested in the earliest signs that the system is beginning to drift, long before any clinical threshold is reached. The image holds that moment of calm before a shift, when everything still appears steady but the direction may already be changing. By tracing these early patterns, I aim to identify the first hints of instability and open the door to more proactive, supportive interventions that protect long‑term health
• Dual Crystals
  This project explores the nature of pi-stacking complexes. The image demonstrates the supramolecular interactions in crystals prepared by students including Ady Witzel in the Advanced Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory course taught by Professor Thomas Richmond. Here, perylene is mixed with 1,2-difluoro-4,5-dinitrobenzene to create the center crystal which has a clear appearance with striking red streaks. The top yellow crystal is pure crystallized perylene that didn’t react with benzene. These compositional differences are highlighted by the overlay, which shows the molecular structures of each crystal. X-ray crystallography was taken by Ryan Vanderlinden to reveal said chemical structure of both crystals.
• Crystallizing Architecture: From Salt to Skin
  This image captures a moment where architecture begins to behave less like an object and more like an organism. Rooted in a material study of salt crystallization, the project investigates how mineral growth - shaped by evaporation, time, and environmental exposure - can inform architectural form and façade systems. Inspired by the Great Salt Lake, the experiments allowed salt to act not as a finish or metaphor alone, but as an active collaborator. Through experimentation of submerged and wicking processes, crystalline surfaces emerged with varying densities, fractures, and translucencies each holding a record of the conditions that shape it. These fragile formations were then digitally translated through structured-light scanning and photogrammetry, transforming ephemeral growth into architectural meshes. Deployed across a high-rise façade, the resulting surface reads as both geological and constructed: a vertical landscape formed through gradual layers of growth rather than forced into form. Growth becomes geometry. Decay becomes information. What began as a small, domestic experiment expanded into an architectural proposition - one that asks how buildings might embody environmental processes than suppress them. Here, architecture becomes an organism - one that grows, adapts, and transforms through the collaboration of material, maker, and nature.
• Seeing the Forest for the Leaves
  This image shows a bottom-up view of tall buildings surrounding the Exchange Place alley off of state street in downtown Salt Lake City. A tree made out of images of leaves is overlain on top of the image. These leaves were pressed, dried, and scanned in our lab at the Natural History Museum as part of an NSF-funded project to examine how particulate matter, or soot, collects on the surfaces of urban tree leaves, and where and who could benefit most from urban forest planting projects. None of these images are color-enhanced; this tree truly shows the wide breadth of colors and shapes of tree leaves found in cities across the U.S, pointing to the different capabilities of tree species as green infrastructure in urban forests.
• POWELL: Performing History, Technology, and Environment in the American West
  For my MS Thesis, I produced an original immersive theatre experience entitled POWELL (2025), based on John Wesley Powell’s (infamous) 1869 surveying expedition through the Grand Canyon. The performance was staged in Fort Douglas 618a– originally constructed as military barracks in the 1870s, the building now hosts the Environmental Humanities program, my home department. POWELL juxtaposed multiple (often uncomfortable) narratives of American expansion, highlighting Powell as a charismatic explorer who framed the Western landscape as a sublime yet conquerable frontier. The venue itself became the crew's nightly camp on the bank of the Colorado River, simultaneously representing the haunting legacy of westward expansion’s most violent tools, Fort Douglas having served, for example, as deployment grounds for the soldiers who perpetrated the 1863 Bear River Massacre against the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. The show’s audience members moved freely among actors, individually choosing their own path. In this image, George Bradley (Jason Hogue ‘27) contends with the expedition’s immense danger. The picture highlights the relationship between the natural world and the troubled human impulse to surveil and exploit it, made evident by the usage of live-camera footage cast onto monitors throughout the building, as seen in the background.
• Fostering Resilience Through Presence: Dimensions of Water Insecurity
  Water is an invigorating, inspiring, and increasingly scarce resource. As a doctoral student in Counseling Psychology, I investigate how individuals cope with water insecurity and scarcity, and what psychological mechanisms may promote climate resilience at the individual and community level. A component of water insecurity is the unpredictability of availability; water insecure communities may not know when or for how long such a precious resource will be readily available. Thus, another crucial component of climate resilience is the ability to be present and creative with water when it is available: to truly appreciate and make meaningful contact with this precious and fleeting resource. Perhaps, this can drive resilience in the face of uncontrollable climate impacts. To me, film photography has a similarly fleeting, ephemeral nature: You are given one chance to capture an image, with no ability to ensure the success of the shot until well after the fact. It is a practice in presence and gratitude that beautifully parallels the dynamic and fluctuating presence of water. In this film photograph, we see a lone hiker engage thoughtfully and delicately with the water around them; modeling the appreciation and resilience that I hope my research will one day promote in others.
• Waste In, Energy out: The Shortcut Way
  What if the materials we call “waste” were treated not as liabilities, but as strategic feedstocks for energy production? This single realization could turn waste into the missing nexus between the exponential growth in global energy demands and a pragmatic energy transition approach, providing a reliable and flexible complement to renewables while reducing pollution. Landfills reaching capacity have become a pressing global challenge, yet the very materials we discard daily hold untapped potential as effective energy resources. My research harnesses this prospect by developing a smart and sustainable pathway that converts waste directly into usable fuels through pyrolysis. Using heat in an oxygen‑free environment, this process converts waste into oils with minimal emissions. Instead of generating waste‑derived crude oil that must be transported and refined through costly, multi‑stage systems, I engineer routes that refine fuels at the point of production. This streamlined shortcut collapses several energy‑intensive steps, reducing time, infrastructure demands, and overall energy use while generating fuel‑range oils ready for immediate use. By uniting waste conversion and fuel refinement in one integrated system, my work simultaneously reduces landfill burdens and delivers cleaner, more efficient energy – reframing waste as a tactical asset for a circular and resilient energy future.
• Conflict at the Cellular Scale
  This image captures a microscopic battle unfolding in the brain of a mouse during viral encephalitis, a disease in which a viral infection causes inflammation in the brain. Blue marks the nuclei of cells, outlining the structure of the brain tissue. Red highlights immune cells, the brain’s built-in defense system, which become activated when a virus is detected. Scattered throughout the tissue in yellow are neurons that have been infected by the virus, showing where infection and inflammation intersect. My research focuses on understanding how this cellular conflict shapes disease. While immune cells are essential for fighting infection, their activity can also contribute to inflammation that damages surrounding brain tissue and disrupts normal brain function. This image freezes a moment where defense and damage exist side by side. By studying how viral infections and inflammation interact, and how factors such as medications and diet may influence this response, we aim to uncover ways to reduce harmful inflammation and improve outcomes after viral brain infections.
• Special Snowflakes
  We are all special snowflakes. Our lives are fleeting records of subtle changes in our environment—thin memories locked into place one experience at a time. So, too, are single crystals. Our lab studies how environmental changes impact the atomic structure and associated material properties of single crystals. Atoms settle into place as snowflakes settle on tree branches. How, then, to arrange the branches? It is enormously complex to determine them retroactively—much better to control their growth from the start. While each snowflake has its unique pattern, the consensus can be designed. The mineral in this photo, switzerite, was grown in a gel medium that forced diffusion-governed order. Its crystalline needles result from preferential growth along specific axes in a stable environment with limited supply.
• Window of Connection
  With over a trillion synapses, the brain is a complex tapestry of relationships. Often overlooked, the immune system also makes synapses, transiently joining with other cells to share a moment of insight. My research lives in the space of exchange between these two systems: I study how gut-brain communication; specifically, how intestinal disease affects the brain’s immune system. Using a burgeoning technique called spatial transcriptomics, this snapshot of a brain during intestinal inflammation features a portal that peers beyond gross morphology into the molecular underpinnings of brain cells. The multicolor blobs delineate individual cells, while the small dots indicate signal from a selection of RNA molecules we think facilitate neuro-immune gut-brain communication. Previously, cells would have needed to be dissociated from one another for analysis, but this technique keeps cells in their native environment so we can more fully appreciate their connections with each other. Respected for centuries in traditional medicine, modern scientists like me have just begun to investigate this robust mind-body connection. In a similar way, this image captures a beautiful art-science intersection, emphasizing their complementary, rather than adversarial, nature. I hope it inspires you to ponder overlooked connections in your own being and harness them for good.
• Malaria Hidden Within: Life Unseen
  Plasmodium parasites cause one of the deadliest infectious diseases known to humankind: malaria. Within the most abundant cell in the human body, the red blood cell, parasites invade and rapidly grow, hidden from sight. On the surface, everything appears normal, yet inside each red blood cell, a complex life is unfolding, wreaking havoc on its host. The entire red blood cell architecture is remodeled, host nutrients are stolen, and daughter parasites are preparing to rupture red blood cells and reinvade new ones. This complex, invisible life is taking shape long before the infection's symptoms are felt. Electron microscopy allows us to cross the line between the seen and unseen. By capturing these parasites inside red blood cells, we illuminate the fundamental biology that sustains them. These images become essential tools for understanding how parasites survive and grow, offering a window into a world unseen and shedding light on a silent infection, turning it into something we can study, question, and ultimately fight.
• Single-Exposure Volumetric Photolithography for Ultra-High-Aspect-Ratio Microstructures: Demonstration with a “UTAH” Pattern
  We present a single-exposure volumetric nanofabrication strategy capable of producing 3D structures with aspect ratios exceeding 100:1 and a theoretical minimum feature size of 4 µm. An inverse-designed holographic phase mask reconstructs a prescribed ultra–depth-of-field ultraviolet intensity distribution within SU-8 photoresist, delivering the required polymerization dose throughout the target volume in a single step. As a demonstration, the four letters “UTAH” were fabricated using four sequential exposures in the Rajesh Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, with an exposure time of approximately 20 s per exposure. This approach enables the fabrication of a wide range of architectures spanning volumes up to 2400 × 800 × 720 µm³, corresponding to effective voxel rates on the order of 0.36 × 10⁶ voxels s⁻¹. The fabricated structure was coated with Pt and imaged using a scanning electron microscope (SEM, FEI Quanta 600 FEG) in Utah NanoFab.
• Scrollytelling of suicide statistics
  This video visualizes the number of suicides after adjustment and shows how these values change year by year. By presenting the temporal evolution of suicide rates, it connects to my research on identifying long-term trends, shifts, and patterns.
• Listening to the Land, Listening to Each other: An Image of Hope in the Face of Climate Change
  The Great Salt Lake is drying up. Temperatures are rising. People are noticing. The phrases visible throughout the image (e.g., “I understand,” “I continually question,” “I fell in love with the vastness and diversity of the Utah wilderness,” “I want to give up,” “I must,” “I will”) were extracted verbatim from a narrative and reorganized according to Listening Guide procedures, a qualitative methodology. Rather than privileging chronology or explanation, the image foregrounds voice, affect, and internal movement. The repetition of “I understand” and “I will,” alongside moments of vulnerability such as “I want to give up,” illustrates the tension between exhaustion, responsibility, meaning-making, and persistence in the face of climate change. The landscape backdrop is not incidental. It situates the voice within place, suggesting that identity, distress, and hope are interwoven with environmental and cultural context. The visual merging of voice and land reflects how people experience climate-related meaning, responsibility, and emotional labor as inseparable from the physical environments they know and love.
• Linear Horizon
  The image represents three views from within the site at three separate times on three different days in Downtown Salt Lake City. The images (9) were then split between Sky, Built Environment, and Ground. Organized in groups of time then by view direction, this study helped with the design formation of a Mixed-Use Multi Residential High Rise by its noticeable repetition and daylight emphasis highlighted with magenta on the built environment.
• Poster presentation
  This is an image of my poster presentation on AI detection and grading of lung cancer modules.