ASU Students Share Experiences from AAAS 2025 Annual Meeting

A group of 12 Arizona State University students traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, in February for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the largest general science conferences in the world. Each year, the Center for Biology and Society and Barrett, The Honors College, co-sponsor ASU students to attend the AAAS conference and compete in the meeting’s poster competition.

“Attending the AAAS 2025 Annual Meeting was an incredible opportunity to share my research and connect with other scholars,” says Ava Claus, an undergraduate honors student who presented a poster in the Environment and Ecology category, focusing on her research investigating ground beetle diversity over time. Ava also shared that this was an amazing opportunity to highlight her work bringing attention to the monitoring and conservation of overlooked organisms to a national audience.

For the contest, each student gave a three-minute presentation on a poster they designed to communicate their research to a panel of up to six content-expert judges. The cohort, including three graduate students and nine undergraduates from across ASU’s campuses, covered a wide range of topics. These topics included understanding the relationship between macrophages and lung cancer, how curiosity and prosocial behavior develop in children, and X-chromosome inactivation.

ASU presenters highlighted how attending AAAS provided an immersive experience for their scientific identity. Anirudh Manjesh, an undergraduate honors student who presented in the Brain and Behavior category, shared, “It was inspiring to engage with scientists from diverse fields, exchange ideas, and learn about groundbreaking discoveries.” Although Manjesh presented his research examining the sleeping habits of honeybees, he is a computer science major at ASU using animal models to inform the development of artificial neural networks—a foundational component of machine learning that can mimic sleep processes and enhance memory consolidation in AI systems. Manjesh’s highly interdisciplinary expertise represents many students from Barrett, The Honors College.

“This experience expanded my network and strengthened my vision for where I want my research to go next,” said Aida Movahed, a second-year PhD student in the Center for Biology and Society who examines the use of lab-grown brain models, called cerebral organoids, as a new avenue for researching neurodegenerative disease. Movahed presented her poster on cerebral organoids and described participating in the poster competition as “a rewarding opportunity to share my work with a broader scientific community and receive insightful feedback from researchers across disciplines.” Movahed hopes to explore cerebral organoid research's ethical, scientific, and translational implications as she develops her dissertation.

Other students found presenting at AAAS highly encouraging for their research. “Attending AAAS instilled in me further passion and motivation for conducting scientific research,” said Tasneem Mohammed, a third-year PhD candidate from the Center for Biology and Society, who presented her research on the impact of academia on science faculty with depression. Mohammed won first place for graduate student presenters in the Science and Society category.

Picture description. ASU students posing for a photo in front of a sign for the AAAS 2025 Annual Meeting. Student names as pictured from left to right: Aubrey Pinteric, Tasneem Mohammed, Christina Stewart, Ava Claus, Sara Korpe, Jynx Pigart, Devagana Shah, Sarah Nesbit, Fathima Nawaz, Akaash Surendra, Anirudh Manjesh. 

Jane Maienschein and Jessica Ranney, the founding and assistant directors of the Center for Biology and Society, along with Georgette Briggs, an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, helped students prepare and practice their posters.

The support and mentoring efforts were successful in more than one way. Similarly, Aubrey Pinteric won first place in the Science and Society category as an undergraduate student for her poster on uterine technologies and their social implications from the past to the future. The opportunity to present research at a national conference like the 2025 AAAS Annual Meeting also solidified Pinteric’s goal to enter a full-time research position upon graduation: “The conference affirmed my interest in continuing my involvement in research.” Pinteric is working towards an eventual career as a primary care physician at a research medical center.

The winners of the AAAS e-poster competition will appear in an April issue of Science magazine.

Picture description. ASU students posing for a photo while seated for the closing plenary talk at the AAAS 2025 Annual Meeting. Student names as pictured from left to right: row seated closest to camera includes Akaash Surendra, Anirudh Manjesh, Sara Korpe; row seated distal to camera includes Aubrey Pinteric, Devangana Shah, Fathima Nawaz, and Christina Stewart. 

During the closing plenary, Arizona State University was announced as the primary sponsor of the 2026 AAAS Annual Meeting. This means that the next AAAS Annual Meeting will be hosted in Phoenix, AZ. The Program Manager for the AAAS+ASU Collaborative, Daniel Bisgrove, a fourth-year Biology & Society PhD Candidate studying human-animal relationships, shared that,  “The Annual Meeting in Phoenix will be an incredibly valuable and local opportunity for ASU students and faculty to share their innovative and impact-driven work with the broader scientific community."

Many of the ASU students co-sponsored by the Center for Biology and Society and Barrett, The Honors College, are excited to have the next annual meeting so close to home, and intend to return for the 2026 Annual Meeting. “AAAS was an incredibly enriching opportunity, and I look forward to attending the conference again in the future,” said Akaash Surendra, who received an honorable mention in the Cell Biology category after presenting his in vitro research with patient-derived cells in exploring the applications of CDK4/6 inhibitors, a drug class most commonly used in breast cancer treatments, for glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer. For students like Surendra, the 2026 Annual Meeting will be their second time ever attending a national science conference of this scale. 

On a more personal note, as a third-year PhD candidate who previously attended the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, I speak from experience when I say attending AAAS the second time is even more incredible.

In 2024, I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the conference. Twenty-four sectors represent scientific fields encompassing research, science policy, and journalism across academic, industry, nonprofit, and government communities. Before this conference, I was comfortable in my niche of foundational research and rarely interacted with booths, panels, and discussions beyond this scope. This was my first experience witnessing how science translated across sectors, mediums, and communities. 

In 2025, I had the opportunity to attend the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, thanks to the continued generous support of the Center for Biology and Society. I felt ready for the poster competition and aced it, winning first place for graduate students in the Social Sciences category with my poster on a national retrospective interview study of how graduate student depression changes over time in science graduate programs.

Picture description. ASU SOLS PhD Candidate C Jynx Pigart [me!] presenting her research poster during the AAAS 2025 e-poster competition, for graduate students in the Social Sciences category. This presentation won first place for this category.

Guided by my prior experience with AAAS in Colorado, I felt prepared to arrive in Boston. Finally, I was ready to meet and network with other brilliant individuals at the intersection of science, policy, and journalism on a national stage. This sentiment was shared among the ASU students who presented this February. “The panels, workshops, and discussions broadened my perspective on the future of science,” Sara Korpe, an undergraduate student who presented a poster on her work investigating immunotherapy for Lewis Lung Carcinoma, added, “I look forward to seeing how my peers and I contribute to the rapidly evolving science landscape.”

Speaking of landscapes, as a Sonoran desert-bound ASU student, I look forward to attending my first AAAS Annual Meeting without a snowstorm in Phoenix, AZ from February 12-14, 2026. 

Picture description. Three people from the School of Life Sciences, Center for Biology & Society posing in the snowfall as they walked from the conference to a networking dinner at a nearby restaurant. From left to right: Assistant Professor Dr. Katelyn Cooper, and her graduate student mentees C Jynx Pigart and Tasneem Mohammed. 

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Written by C Jynx Pigart, PhD Candidate in Biology & Society at Arizona State University. 

Transparency note: Quote approval was obtained for all mentioned students.