Undergraduate News

Stay updated on recent achievements, research highlights, and news within the SSE Undergraduate community.

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Career Fair Conversations Lead to Summer Opportunities for Two Tulane Students

Engineering physics junior Trae’jon Turner-Smith and biomedical engineering junior Balpreet Parmar share how connections at Tulane’s SSE Career Fair led to internships, new skills, and greater confidence.

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Ishita Pal Helps Tulane Students Find Their Way into Research

SSE’s undergraduate research coordinator brings experience spanning geology, astrophysics and climate science to a new role connecting students with opportunities, mentors and essential research skills.

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As the coding boom fades, computer science grads focus on AI skills in choppy job market

Computer science student Jack Zemke was getting nowhere despite sending out hundreds of job applications that mostly disappeared into the void — ignored.

With his graduation from Tulane University just days away, he was considering moving back in with his parents when he got a break thanks to a group project he had worked on involving an AI-powered search tool. As he touted it at an engineering conference, an employee at a civil engineering firm approached.

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From a Flyer on a Board to the Marshes of Cocodrie: How One Tulanian Found Her Research Home

Malai Harrington found ecohydrology research via a flyer. She studies climate, water, and carbon in Dr. Molini's lab, including field work at LUMCON.

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Recent NTC Graduate Is Paris-Bound With a Lafayette Fellowship

Zachary Hom received a Lafayette Fellowship for a master's at Université Paris Saclay in France. The program strengthens US-France ties and leadership.

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From Family Legacy to Physician-Scientist: Ben VanDerHeyden's Path at Tulane SSE

Ben VanDerHeyden has a photograph of himself walking around Tulane's campus at 10 years old. Both of his parents are School of Science and Engineering alumni, and they were married at Rogers Memorial Chapel. The university was always part of his story. What he could not have known back then was the specific shape that story would take: four years of undergraduate research, a honors thesis on DNA replication and cancer, and now a place in Tulane's MD/PhD program, where he will train to become a physician-scientist.

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From Tulane to NVIDIA GTC: Stepping Into the Future of AI

Michael Weild, a member of Tulane’s Class of 2026, arrived at Tulane planning to study finance, following a path that felt both familiar and expected. His direction shifted during his early years on campus, as a combination of personal challenges and changing circumstances forced him to think more critically about what his education needed to deliver.

“At some point, it stopped being about just being here,” he said. “It became about return on investment.”

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Care for community at the center of neuroscience grad’s leadership

Paresh Kolluru didn’t come to Tulane intending to be a student leader, but his care for his community made him one, anyway. Kolluru, a Tulane 34 recipient and Lafayette native who is graduating with a major in neuroscience from the School of Science and Engineering and a minor in philosophy from the School of Liberal Arts, moved into Wall Residential Hall his first year with another Louisianian and an international student as his roommates. They were all in a new environment, away from home for the first time, and they all wanted to find a community.  

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The Final Frontier in the Crescent City: The Rise of The Tulane Rocketry Association

Tulane students created a rocketry club, aiming to build an aerospace program and achieve high-power launches despite lack of formal programs.

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Turning Seconds into Safety: Tulane Students Build Automated System to Strengthen Airport Explosive Detection

In airports across the country, security decisions are often made in seconds. When a bag is flagged for further inspection, Transportation Security Administration officers move to a secondary screening process that can determine whether a substance poses a real threat. That process, however, still relies heavily on manual chemical testing and human interpretation.

A team of Tulane University engineering physics students, Mia Stolakis, Kyler Silas, Jude Kelley, Avery Lahm, and Matheo Graham Capasso saw an opportunity to change that.