Highlights from the 2026 BHC Symposium

group photo bhc 20266

The Bay Honors Consortium offers community college students the opportunity to present their honors research projects at some of the most prestigious university campuses in California. This year, it was held at Stanford University.

On Saturday, May 2, 2026, twenty-one of our members represented the Las Positas Honors Transfer Program at this momentous event. For the second year in a row, LPC Honors students made up the largest group of student presenters from a single community college at this symposium.

LPC Finalist

The Katharine Award & Heslet Scholar Social Sciences Award

This year, one of our very own Honors students, Manu Buatavatava, was named a finalist for the following two awards for his Honors research titled "Trauma, Personality, and Aggression: A Pilot Study Among Incarcerated Men."

The Heslet Scholar Award (Social Science): Named after former Foothill College Honors Director Mary Lou Heslet, the BHC's Proposal Committee selects finalists based on the "promise of their abstracts," and a winner is chosen based on their presentation on the day of the symposium.

The Katharine Award: Named after former Skyline College Honors Director Katharine Harer, this award recognizes a student whose abstract was written with exceptional "flair and expressiveness." This year, this award was considered for a project proposal with a clear intent of highlighting and aiding the needs of marginalized communities to contribute to the social justice dialogue in academia.

More info on the Bay Honors Consortium awards HERE.

List of Presenters

(listed last names, A-Z) 2026 SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM PDF

Archisha Anshuman "How TikTok's Algorithm Contributes to Political Division Through Hyper-Individualized Content"

Abigail Brandel "Theory vs. Reality: Evaluating the Computational Quantum Chemistry Predictions of Greenhouse Gas Infrared Spectra"

Manu Buatavatava "Trauma, Personality, and Aggression: A Pilot Study Among Incarcerated Men"

Camryn Burke "Embodied Logic in Classical Ballet"

Arya Ferozy "Using Michelson Interferometers to Detect Specific Sound Frequencies"

Aaron Fried "Do Antioxidants Weaken Antibiotics? Effect of High Vitamin C Concentrations on Ciprofloxacin Efficacy Against Escherichia coli"

Mattéa Gutierrez "Is Silence Compliance? Bay Area Perspectives on Modern Political Expression"

Susana Andrea Ibáñez Terrazas "Sound as Archive: A Music Modeling Diaspora of Adaptation, Migration, and Identity in Andean-Influenced Chamber Composition"

Aparajita Kantak, Shyam Balasubramanian, Chris Sun "Let There Be Light: Designing a Voice-Activated Lighting Interface with Arduino"

Nika Karpelevitch "Denglish': Digital Linguistic Diffusion of English into German"

Sidhant Parashar "Drag-Based Learning: An ODE Regulation Framework for Artificial Intelligence Under Stochastic Distribution Shifts"

Suhaila Radwan "Food for Thought: Why There's Still Skepticism Surrounding Genetically Modified Crops"

Maegha Ramanathan "California Sports Media Portrayals of Female Athletes of Color"

Rifa Sipai "Toxic Tea and Tiny Plastics: The Effects of California Buckeye Allelochemicals and Soil Microplastics on Radish Germination and Growth"

Grant Yong "Reclaiming the Narrative: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Chinese-Indonesian Art, 1998 to Present"

Yina Yoon "The Influence of Personality Type on Perceived Stress Related to Childhood Trauma"

Alisa Zaitseva "The Survival Boundary of Exoplanets"

Daniel Zhang "From Dissection to Qi: Two Visions of the Human Body"

Crystal Zhu "Chill Out, It's Just a Phase: A Low-Cost Cooling Formula Using Salt, Sugar, and SSD Phase Stabilization"