Research Awards

The Social Sciences Undergraduate Research + Creative Symposium aims to recognize both early-stage and advanced projects among a variety of research categories.

SSURS Awards

2025 Awardees

Best Poster Research Methods | Poster
Giselle Rodriguez-Chavez & Fernanda Moralez-Calva
Stress Across Cultures: The Cognitive Cost in the Latinx Community

Best Poster Research Findings | Poster
Nicolas Lucio
Exploring Predictors of Health Perception: A Statistical Analysis of Behavioral, Psychological and Socioeconomic Factors

Best Poster [Visualization] Presentation | Poster
Isabella Gonzalez
Examining Factors Impacting Educational Attainment

Alexandra Xu and Ellie Jung
Here’s some advice, Check It Twice: Exploring Two-Fold Intervention to Motivate Ballot Error Detection

Best Overall Poster | Poster
Ahi Ajayan
Assessing the Impact of Gender and Anxiety Levels on Emotional Memory

Best Methodological Approach | Oral Presentation
Somya Mittal
Understanding Sarcasm Requires Theory of Mind after Acute Stroke

Abhinav Kona
Less is Better: A Cognitively Inspired Unsupervised Model for Language Segmentation

Best Research Findings | Oral Presentation
Jacob Buergler
Differential Affective and Cognitive Effects of Cognitive Reappraisal Strategies

Best Overall Presentation | Oral Presentation
Andrew Kim
Veneration vs. Respect: Reevaluating Public Aversion to Amending the U.S. Constitution

2024 Awardees

Best Research Methodology | Poster
Jacob Buergler
Emotion Regulation and Mnemonic Discrimination in Depression

Best Poster Research Findings | Poster
Elisabeth Torres-Schulte
Beyond Exorcism: Novel Understandings of Mental Illness Through Catholic Art

Best Poster Communication | Poster
Shivani Gollapudi
Community Responses to Environmental Risk in Houston's Fifth Ward Cancer Cluster

Best Research Methodology | Oral Presentation
Skye Fredericks
Sex, Gender, and the Performance of Care in Community Harm Reduction for Skid Row, Los Angeles

Best Research Findings | Oral Presentation
Brandon Frizzell
Mi casa es tu casa: Investigating Cohabitation and Inflation Rates in Gran Buenos Aires

Best Delivery and Presentation | Oral Presentation
Sophia Peng
Community-Making Among First Generation Chinese Immigrants in Houston’s Chinese Community Center

Jenessa Shapiro Award

The Jenessa Shapiro Award is given in honor of the founder of the Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium to the most outstanding student presenter among all Inquiry Week research symposia at Rice. The award recognizes the ideals of the scientific enterprise exhibited by Dr. Shapiro throughout her career at Rice: curiosity, ingenuity, creativity and hard work.

* Denotes the official recipient of the Jenessa Shapiro Award.

2024 Nominations

• Sydney Coldren * - Constructing Malnutrition: Dams, Technoscience, and Food Aid in Cochabamba, Bolivia
• Morgan McMains-Nurisio - Crimmigration, Criminal Labeling, and Executions: The Media’s Portrayal of Executed Foreign Nationals Over Time
• Phoenix Orta - Cattle on the Border of New Spain: Faunal Analysis of Mission Dolores de los Ais
• Sumin Yoon - Gifted Care: Reconfiguring HIV/AIDS Caregiving in the Post-Treatment Era
• Megan McDonald - Foodscapes in the Lone Star State: Exploring Food Access on Texas College Campuses

2023 Nominations

• Jacob Buergler - Emotion Dysregulation Associated with Greater Depressive Symptoms and Memory for Details
• Aditi Velgekar (with Fernanda Morales-Calva, Michelle Sekili) – The Effects of Attention and Learning on Episodic Memory Performance

2022 Nominations

• Ashley Fitzpatrick* – Senior Student Experiences with Egg Donation: A Qualitative Study on Agency, Mental Health, and Financial Circumstance
• Charlotte Hirsch - Senior Generic-You as a Linguistic Mechanism of Psychological Distancing
• Dylan Nguyen - Like a Good Neighbor, Nonprofits Are (Sometimes) There: Neighborhood Transformation and Nonprofit Organizations