Students present posters at Student Research Days

Students in the School of Computing participated in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s annual Student Research Days events April 6-10. 

Student Research Days is a weeklong series of research-focused events sponsored by the Office of Research and Innovation, Office of Graduate Studies, and Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. Events include undergraduate and graduate poster sessions, research presentations, and the Student Research Slam. 

Students participated in the Undergraduate Poster Session and Creative Exhibition, which provides undergraduate students the chance to showcase their research or creative activity, to communicate their results to others, and to learn about other areas of research and creative activity.  

Computer science students Dakoda Oden and Armon’e Dean had the opportunity to work with School of Computing professors Leen-Kiat Soh and Ashok Samal through the university's Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) Program, which supports undergraduates to work with faculty mentors in research or creative activities. Oden and Dean began their projects with Soh and Samal through the Nebraska Summer Research Program in 2025 and extended the projects through the current academic year. 

The projects also involved working with the Advancing Justice Collaboratory, an interdisciplinary research group led by psychology associate professor Ashley Votruba that seeks to integrate technology to promote access to justice. Both projects focused on analyzing and ensuring reliability of collected legal data that would be used in justice-focused research and real-world initiatives. 

“I really enjoyed working with the Advancing Justice Collaboratory,” Oden said. “It was a group environment, but it was very focused as well. Armon'e and I were working on the computer science side, and others were working on the social science side. It was really interesting to hear all these different perspectives.” 

Dean, a computer science major and sociology minor, said he was seeking a research project that would blend both areas of study. He enjoyed being able to use his computing skills to study issues that aligned with his personal passions. 

“I have always had a more technical brain, but I grew up in a family that is all involved in humanities,” Dean said. “I was really trying to find a way to bring both of those together, and I think this project has opened up a whole world of applications for me to combine what I know with what I want to do.” 

Oden said he also gained valuable knowledge and skills by utilizing resources in the Holland Computing Center. Thanks to HCC’s training workshops and support staff, he was able to learn how to use the Swan supercomputer and other tools to conduct his research.

“I had no idea how to train a local LLM model for this, and now I have every idea how to,” Oden said. “I also know how not to do it, which was something really interesting to learn too.” 

Students in other engineering majors also had a chance to collaborate with School of Computing faculty on interdisciplinary projects. Luther Busching, a mechanical engineering student, has been conducting research through UCARE with School of Computing assistant professor Liang He for the past year. Their project focused on advancing theft detection systems for electric bicycles, and Busching said the experience has helped him prepare for a future in graduate school. 

“Dr. He was able to guide me on how we formulate research questions and how we can break up the research into tests that we can actually complete, but that are still directed toward our end goal,” Busching said. “This is a great experience to not only see what research is like, but also to start developing the skills that I'll need later on. It's been great to get a mentor and get experience as someone who is looking into grad school.” 

Learn more about Student Research Days here.