Six graduating seniors have been selected for the prestigious Senior Scholar Award at Simmons University. Sponsored by the Provost’s Office and the Office of Research and Fellowships, the Senior Scholar Award recognizes outstanding scholarly research and creative works across a variety of disciplinary fields.
Introducing the Senior Scholar Award Winners
Daniella Adeshina ’26
Major: Computer Science
Faculty Mentor: Nanette Veilleux
Project: Mitigating Cybersecurity Threats in Africa: Addressing VPN Usage and Regional Disparities in Accessing Online Media
This project examines the widespread use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) across Africa and the overlooked cybersecurity risks they pose to millions of users. While VPNs are commonly used to enhance privacy and bypass restrictions, this study argues that their unregulated and often misunderstood use can expose users to data leakage, malicious providers, and false assumptions of security, particularly in regions with limited digital infrastructure and cybersecurity awareness.
Using a mixed-methods approach, this research analyzes survey data from 500 African internet users alongside interviews with African students to understand how VPNs are selected, used, and trusted. The study identifies 10 recurring cybersecurity challenges, including reliance on unverified services, lack of transparency in data handling, and gaps in user awareness that increase exposure to online threats.
By linking user behavior to broader gaps in policy, education, and infrastructure, this project contributes new insight into how cybersecurity risks are shaped by both technical systems and social conditions. The findings offer targeted recommendations to improve digital literacy, strengthen regulatory oversight, and promote safer, more transparent tools. Ultimately, this research frames cybersecurity as a critical issue of equity, access, and global digital inclusion.
About Daniella Adeshina
Daniella Adeshina is an international student from Nigeria with a strong interest in the intersection of cybersecurity, technology policy, and global digital access. She is the founder and president of the National Society of Black Engineers chapter at Simmons and has held regional leadership roles promoting student engagement and professional development.
Adeshina has also built professional experience through internships and projects in technology and finance, contributing to data-driven decision-making, software development, and process improvement. After graduation, she will work at a leading investment firm focusing on cybersecurity policy, combining her professional work with her passion for creating secure and equitable digital systems. She plans to continue advanced research in cybersecurity and technology policy, with the long-term goal of leading initiatives at the intersection of technology, finance, and global digital security, and is also considering pursuing an MBA.
Déborah Duarte ’26
Major: Neuroscience and Behavior (Cognitive Behavioral track)
Mentor: Kelsea Gildawie
Project: Effects of Maternal Separation on Cellular Activation Following Exposure to Ambiguous Threat
Key Contributors: Dr. Lauren Granata
Early life adversity (ELA) significantly increases the risk for anxiety and mood disorders, often with a more severe onset in women. While ELA is linked to altered startle responses, the specific neural mechanisms by which childhood trauma disrupts adult threat processing remain poorly understood. This project investigates the hypothesis that maternal separation, a validated model of ELA, causes sex-specific disruptions in cellular activation within brain circuits responsible for responses to ambiguous threats. By utilizing c-Fos as a marker of neural activity, this research aims to identify how early caregiving disruptions alter the functional landscape of the brain during defensive behaviors.
The research process involves a rodent model of ELA where litters of Sprague-Dawley rats underwent daily maternal separation (three hours per day) during the postnatal period (postnatal day 2-20). In adulthood, male and female rats were subjected to a light-enhanced acoustic startle test to measure threat sensitivity. Following behavioral testing, immunohistochemistry, the process of staining tissue, and fluorescent microscopy are employed to quantify cellular activation in the prefrontal cortex and basolateral amygdala, regions critical for regulating fear and anxiety.
This study contributes vital new information by mapping activity patterns in regions where the effects of ELA emerge. Beyond the laboratory, this work holds significant social importance; identifying these neural targets is critical for developing better therapeutic interventions and prevention strategies for humans who have experienced childhood maltreatment or neglect.
About Déborah Duarte
As a student researcher in the Gildawie Lab, Duarte investigates the long-term impact of early life adversity through a rodent model of maternal separation. Her current research utilizes immunohistochemistry and fluorescent microscopy to assess cellular activation in key brain regions involved in threat and emotion regulation.
Passionate about exploring the mechanisms of vulnerability and resilience, Duarte’s work contributes to the identification of neural targets for future therapeutic interventions in mood and anxiety disorders. Following her graduation in May 2026, she plans to pursue a PhD in neuroscience to continue her career in scientific research. Outside of her academic and laboratory pursuits, Duarte enjoys the performing arts, classic literature, and sports such as volleyball and soccer.
Abisha Joyce ’26
Majors: Africana Studies, Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Mentor: Tatiana M.F. Cruz
Project: What Is Life Without a Man?: Widows and the Power of Social Exclusion and Feminist Solidarity in Tamil Nadu, India
Feminist movements in the Global South have often been marginalized due to the dominance of Eurocentric perspectives in academia. Women from the Global South are frequently depicted as passive, perpetual victims rather than as active agents of change. This project challenges such reductive portrayals by centering the lived experiences of Tamil Indian women who defy patriarchal expectations.
In India, societal traditions render widowhood as a form of gendered social exclusion, resulting in the stigmatization of single women. Within a culture of collectivism, exclusion is a powerful punishment used to uphold the system of Brahmanical patriarchy, where submission to caste-privileged men is integral. Women who fail that divine duty, whether through separation or death, lose societal value and protection. However, single women often encompass lives of feminist resistance as they redefine ideas of womanhood, motherhood, and what it means to live in a society that casts them aside.
This project explores how dominant norms are perpetuated and how single women in the Global South resist and create in the face of this exclusion. Utilizing transnational, decolonial, Black, and Dalit feminist frameworks, this project centers ten oral histories conducted in Tamil Nadu, India, with women across diverse contexts, including widows, divorced women, nuns, daughters of widows, and women’s rights organizers. Ultimately, this thesis argues that Indian society generationally upholds and teaches punishment and exclusion for single women; however, the path to change can be seen through these women, who subsequently create alternative identities and communities grounded in resistance, solidarity, and radical joy.
About Abisha Joyce
Abisha Joyce is passionate about social justice, media studies, and BIPOC feminisms, as seen in her academic work. As a second-generation Tamil immigrant herself, these interests are deeply personal and rewarding to explore. She looks forward to continuing her passions after graduating, whether that be through graduate school, nonprofit work, or wherever else her interests take her. Joyce plans to explore these next steps while continuing her joy of traveling, perhaps returning to Ireland, where she spent a semester, or India, where her research was conducted.
Tiana Robles ’26
Major: Literature
Mentor: Renée Bergland
Project: Where the Moons Cross
Where the Moons Cross is a mythic epic fantasy novel set in the fractured world of Nhyra. The narrative explores how societies endure rupture, scarcity, and loss when balance collapses and communal bonds begin to strain. Rather than framing survival as an individual achievement, the novel centers collective responsibility, shared labor, and interdependence as ethical necessities in both personal and political life.
The worldbuilding and narrative structure are shaped by the Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of Kwanzaa, which function not as symbolic background but as the ethical architecture of the story. Principles such as Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative
Economics), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Nia (Purpose), and Imani (Faith) inform the social organization of the tribes, the moral choices characters confront, and the consequences that arise from isolation and unchecked ambition. Through this framework, the novel explores how balance must be actively practiced rather than passively inherited.
At the center of the narrative is the tension between Twilight’s Child, a figure bound to restoration and relational care, and the Herald of Unmaking, a being born from mortal desire to surpass natural limits. Their opposing paths illuminate the novel’s central question: whether ambition can coexist with harmony. By blending speculative fiction with ethical inquiry, Where the Moons Cross positions storytelling as both a creative practice and a way of exploring memory, identity, and collective responsibility.
About Tiana Robles
Tiana Robles is a Boston-based writer. Her academic and creative work is grounded in a deep interest in storytelling, cultural memory, and the ways communities preserve knowledge across generations. Drawing inspiration from myth, speculative fiction, and traditions of Black memory keeping, she is particularly interested in how stories function as vessels for history, identity, and collective imagination.
Paulina Rodas ’26
Majors: Economics, International Relations
Mentor: Niloufer Sohrabji
Project: Counting What Matters: How Statistical Capacity Shapes Development in Latin America
This project explores the relationship between national statistical capacity and development in Latin America. Development outcomes are commonly evaluated using indicators such as GDP and the Human Development Index (HDI), but these measures alone do not fully explain why countries in the region exhibit persistent development disparities. Motivated by these gaps and by the observation that countries with higher levels of development also tend to have stronger data systems, this research examines whether stronger national statistical capacity is associated with higher human development in Latin America.
Using World Bank data for 18 Latin American countries from 2015 to 2023, the study estimates a country fixed-effects model to analyze the relationship between the Statistical Performance Index (SPI) and the Human Development Index (HDI). The model also accounts for government effectiveness, trade openness, public spending on education and health, and the number of researchers. The results show that statistical capacity, government effectiveness, and trade openness are positively and statistically significantly associated with HDI. In contrast, government health expenditure is negatively associated with HDI, consistent with the idea that spending often rises during periods of economic or social stress.
By focusing on Latin America, a region with shared structural challenges but wide variation in institutional strength, this project contributes new empirical evidence to development economics. The findings suggest that statistical capacity is not simply a technical input, but a key institutional factor that shapes how governments identify social needs, evaluate policies, and pursue long-term development.
About Paulina Rodas
Paulina Rodas is an international student from Honduras and an Honors Program student with academic interests in development economics, education policy, and institutional capacity in Latin America. Rodas has completed international NGO work in Geneva during a summer study abroad program and has conducted econometric research on the relationship between national statistical capacity and development across Latin American countries. She is currently a Business Development and Marketing Intern at Connor’s Kindness Project, a nonprofit that supports children and families through kindness initiatives and community partnerships. After graduation, Rodas plans to pursue a master’s in development economics and education and hopes to build a career in international development focused on evidence-based policy and long-term social impact.
MJ Vasquez ’26
Major: Chemistry
Mentor: Arpita Saha
Project: Investigating the biological reactivities of a family of lanthanide metal complexes bearing 2,2-bipyridine in developing novel chemotherapy drugs
Key Contributors: Gina Gawarji ’26
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Current chemotherapy drugs, like cisplatin, result in harsh and sometimes permanent side effects. This is due to its poor selectivity between healthy and cancerous cells. In this study, a new type of potential anticancer drug was made from lanthanide metals combined with an organic molecule called 2,2′-bipyridine. 2,2-bipyridine is known to interact well with metal ions and has shown useful biological activity in past research. Lanthanide metals have distinct chemical properties, suggesting potential applications as anti-cancer agents.
Several lanthanide complexes were successfully prepared, and their structures were analyzed using techniques like X-ray crystallography and InfraRed spectroscopy. To better understand how these compounds might work against cancer, their interactions with DNA were examined using viscosity measurements and circular dichroism spectroscopy. It was found that the metal complex interacts with DNA in a groove binding manner. Unlike covalent binding or intercalation, this type of interaction is weaker, yet more specific to DNA. To explore the toxicity and specificity of this compound, the viability of cancerous cells and healthy cells was compared at equal drug dosage. It was found that the metal complexes target breast cancer cells more selectively than healthy cells, showing lower cell viability for the cancerous cells than the healthy cells.
These findings show that lanthanide-2,2-bipyridine complexes exhibit promising anti-cancer properties and selectivity. These complexes suggest potential advantages over current chemotherapy drugs that have poor selectivity and high toxicity.
About MJ Vasquez
MJ Vasquez is on the engineering 3+2 track. She plans to continue her studies in chemical engineering and hopes to earn a doctorate in a related field. After graduation, Vasquez looks forward to a career spent contributing to the next generation of scientific research.