Monday, October 5, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Physics
Name: Shuaixiang Zhang
Title: Michel Electron Studies Using Photon Detection System in the DUNE Far Detector Prototype
Location: Swain West 130
Chair: Professor Jon Urheim
Contact: 812-855-4178
Monday, October 5, 2026, 3:00 p.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Folklore and Ethnomusicology
Name: Niger Sultana
Title: Islam in Transit: Ritual Mourning and Gendered Memory in Diaspora
Location: Classroom Office Building Room 261
Chair: Professor Jason Baird Jackson
Contact: 812-856-1868
Monday, October 12, 2026, 12:00 p.m.
Division: School of Global and International Studies
Program: Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures
Name: Shadi Alomari
Title: Some Aspects of the Genetic Relationship between Semitic and Indo-European Languages: A Diachronic Analysis of Morphological and Lexical Elements
Location: Global and International Studies Building 3067
Chair: Professor Nader Morkus / Professor Issam Albdairat
Contact: 812-856-2400 / 812-837-3193
Tuesday, October 13, 2026, 12:00 p.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
Name: Yi Liu
Title: Temporal-spectral weighting functions for Mandarin lexical tone perception in noise
Location: Regional Academic Health Center, Room C1020Y
Chair: Professor Jennifer Lentz
Contact: 812-856-0783
Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 3:00 p.m.
Division: School of Education
Program: Counseling Psychology
Name: Taylor Towery
Title: Neurodivergence in the Therapy Room: Help-Seeking, Identity, and the Call for Neurocultural Humility
Location: Wright Education Building Rm 2140
Chair: Professor Rebecca Martinez
Contact: 812-855-6628
Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 3:00 p.m.
Division: School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Program: Computer Science
Name: Zachary Wilkerson
Title: Using Deep Learning to Extract Indexing Features for Case Retrieval
Location: Luddy Hall 3111
Chair: Professor David Leake
Contact: 812-855-9756
Friday, October 23, 2026, 4:00 p.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Chemistry
Name: FNU Payal
Title: De Novo Design, Engineering, and Mechanistic Understanding of Artificial Metalloenzymes for Selective Catalysis
Location: Chemistry Building, Room C033
Chair: Professor Jared Lewis
Contact: 812-856-0454
Monday, October 26, 2026, 3:30 p.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: African American and African Diaspora Studies
Name: Amelia Smith
Title: Embodied Black Studies Theory: Iris Rosa Santiago鈥檚 Black Dance Pedagogy
Location: Ballantine Hall room 603
Chair: Professor Maria Hamilton Abegunde / Professor Valerie Grim
Contact: 812-855-0637 / 812-855-4726
Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
Division: School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Program: Environmental Science
Name: Emily DeTemple
Title: Daphnia - a toxicological model for dissecting chemical impacts on freshwater ecosystems
Location: O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Room A225
Chair: Professor Joseph Shaw
Contact: 812-855-1392
Friday, October 30, 2026, 1:00 p.m.
Division: School of Education
Program: Learning and Developmental Science - Learning Sciences
Name: Daeun Hong
Title: From Diagnosis to Support: Designing and Examining LLM-Based Scaffolding for Collaborative Problem Solving in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Location: Wright Education Building Rm 2102
Chair: Professor Cindy Hmelo-Silver
Contact: 512-284-1260
Friday, October 30, 2026, 3:30 p.m.
Division: School of Global and International Studies
Program: Central Eurasian Studies
Name: Ismet Herdem
Title: The Geopolitics of Energy and International Security in the Middle East: Turkish鈥揑ranian Relations
Location: Remote defense; contact chair for details
Chair: Professor Kemal Silay / Professor Jamsheed Choksy
Contact: 812-855-5227 / 812-855-8643
Monday, November 2, 2026, 3:00 p.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Sociology
Name: Yanming Kuang
Title: Panethnic Identity and Collective Action among Asian and Latino Immigrants
Location: Remote defense; contact chair for details
Chair: Professor Dina Okamoto
Contact: 812-855-2209
Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 11:30 a.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Criminal Justice
Name: Leo Yang
Title: Digital Broken Windows: The Sociopsychological Pathway to Toxic Behavioral Contagion
Location: Sycamore Hall room 312
Chair: Professor Bruce Sales / Professor Susan Herring
Contact: 812-856-1324 / 812-856-4919
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 9:30 a.m.
Division: School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Program: Computer Science
Name: Kaitlynne Wilkerson
Title: Using Episodic Knowledge for LLMs and Methods for Handling Hallucinations of Episodic Knowledge
Location: Remote defense; contact chair for details
Chair: Professor David Leake
Contact: 812-855-9756
Friday, November 6, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Economics
Name: Marco Acosta Carrion
Title: Essays on Education Policy and School Choice
Location: Wylie Hall Room 225
Chair: Professor Michael Kaganovich / Professor Ruli Xiao
Contact: 812-855-6967 / 812-855-3213
Monday, November 9, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
Division: School of Education
Program: Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methodology
Name: Darcy Furlong
Title: Cripping Child Centered Care: Centering Children's Participation in (Dis)ability Assessments
Location: Remote defense; contact chair for details
Chair: Professor Jessica Lester
Contact: 812-856-8328
Monday, November 9, 2026, 3:00 p.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Chemistry
Name: Alec Sanchez
Title: Computational Models to Study the Physicochemical Properties of Drug Molecules and Optical Materials
Location: Chemistry Building, Room C033
Chair: Professor Krishnan Raghavachari
Contact: 812-322-2824
Thursday, November 12, 2026, 11:00 a.m.
Division: School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Program: Intelligent Systems Engineering
Name: Mahmoud Ali
Title: Sensor-Native and Physics-Aware Representations for Robust Robot Perception and Navigation
Location: Luddy AI 2005
Chair: Professor Lantao Liu
Contact: 812-856-7065
Thursday, November 12, 2026, 2:30 p.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Chemistry
Name: Aaron Petersen
Title: Experimental and Theoretical Study of the OH-initiated Oxidation of Volatile Organic Compounds: Rate constants, Radical Propagation, and Chemical Modeling
Location: Chemistry Building, Room C033
Chair: Professor Philip Stevens
Contact: 812-856-0863
Friday, November 13, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: French / Linguistics
Name: Arielle Roadman
Title: On the positioning of adjectives in French: factors of change, diachronic shift and language contact
Location: Global and International Studies Building, room 1134
Chair: Professor Barbara Vance / Professor Kevin Rottett
Contact: 812-855-2702 / 812-855-6164
Tuesday, December 8, 2026, 11:30 a.m.
Division: School of Medicine
Program: Cell, Molecular and Cancer Biology
Name: Tara Metcalfe
Title: Regulation of Platinum-Induced Ovarian Cancer Stem Cell Plasticity by Vitamin D Receptor Signaling
Location: Simon Hall 001
Chair: Professor Kenneth Nephew / Professor Peter Hollenhorst
Contact: 812-929-7728 / 812-855-1151
Friday, December 11, 2026, 1:00 p.m.
Division: School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Program: Information Science
Name: Huixin Tian
Title: Zhuanma: The Making of Coding Careers among Transnational Chinese Migrants
Location: Remote defense; contact chair for details
Chair: Professor Ronald Day
Contact: 812-361-4384
Wednesday, December 16, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
Division: College of Arts and Sciences
Program: Genome, Cell and Development Biology
Name: Shu Zhang
Title: Epigenetic Regulation of Therapeutic Resistance in Cancer: Roles of MAT2A-Mediated SAM Metabolism, DNA Methylation, and Cancer Stemness
Location: Simon Hall 001
Chair: Professor Kenneth Nephew / Professor Jason Tennessen
Contact: 812-855-9445 / 812-855-9803