Undergraduate and master’s students are deeply involved in the work of the Alabama Life Research Institute (ALRI). Over the past year, we have hosted more than 25 students who conducted over 10 research projects spanning multiple disciplines, including biological sciences, neuroscience, human learning, and community health. Project topics included stroke, aphasia, environmental stressors, aging and cardiovascular health in rural areas, psychosis, opioid use, HIV, language decoding, preschool language development, and bilingualism.
Through their work, students gained hands-on experience across the full spectrum of the research process—from literature reviews, experimental design, and protocol development to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Five ALRI undergraduate teams presented their findings at the 2025 Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity Conference at The University of Alabama.
- The psychosis research team (Jalen Robbins, Gabby Sandlin, and Liviy Tole) presented a poster examining functional brain differences between individuals with schizophrenia and those with high schizotypy, using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) during a cartoon picture description task.
- The bilingualism team (Nicole Jhun and Anna Ferguson) shared their EEG-based study on how beginning and advanced English learners of Chinese process the past aspectual marker, highlighting neural differences in second-language acquisition.
- Representing the stroke recovery project, Ava Garner presented findings on how health and family-related factors affect rehabilitation outcomes. Their research revealed that family environment and marital status had the strongest influence on recovery.
- Ryan Joesting, from the Department of Computer Science, demonstrated interdisciplinary research on semantic decoding in multilinguals. Using deep learning models applied to fMRI data, his work explores the future of brain-computer interfaces for linguistically diverse populations.
- From the Department of Psychology, Meredith Dai and Savannah Sempier presented their research on the developmental neural mechanisms of infant language processing at the lexical, sentence, and discourse levels—addressing key gaps in our understanding of preschool language development.
In November 2025, two ALRI undergraduates—Liviy Tole and Tracy Wright—will present their work at the prestigious Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego, CA. Liviy will share results from an fMRI study examining theory of mind in individuals with schizotypy. Tracy will present findings on the relationship between white matter integrity and verbal learning ability in individuals with schizophrenia.
Finally, ALRI partnered with mechanical engineering students to design and build a full-scale MRI simulator. This custom-built simulator replicates the dimensions of an actual MRI scanner, plays scanner sounds, and includes a motorized bed. It serves a critical role in preparing participants—especially children and special populations—for real MRI sessions by reducing anxiety and improving compliance.
