Buffett Undergraduate Research Fellowship Project Descriptions
As a part of the Buffett Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program application via SOAP, students were provided with the option to indicate up to two research projects for which they would like to apply and must submit a separate cover letter for each project in order to be considered. Students were asked to provide the link(s) to the project(s) for which they were seeking to apply and note in the title of the cover letter the project they were applying for with that letter (i.e., "ProjectName, Your LastName Cover Letter"). Learn about the research projects below.
Open Job Search
Any eligible undergraduate student is encouraged to apply for one or two of the following faculty projects via SOAP.
AI Bytes the Ocean
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming society, offering the potential to extend human lifespans, drive scientific breakthroughs and fuel economic growth. However, its advancement comes at a significant cost to the environment. This project will focus on creating a participatory AI installation to draw parallels between microplastics and data pollution.
- Faculty Mentor: Ozge Samanci, Associate Professor, School of Communication (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid, in person and remote
COSMIC: Creating Optimal Space Mission International Crews
The COSMIC (Creating Optimal Space Mission International Crews) is an innovative project developing TEAMSTaR (Tool for Evaluating And Mitigating Space Team Risks), a sophisticated decision support system for international space missions. This research has profound implications for international collaboration in space exploration, particularly for future Mars missions where crews must function effectively across cultural boundaries in isolated, confined environments.
- Faculty Mentor: Noshir Contractor, Professor, McCormick School of Engineering and School of Communication (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid with potential international conference travel
Digital Performances in Viral Times
This project seeks to research and analyze virtual performances conducted during the recent global pandemic in non-US locations, particularly in regions where artists lacked resources and tech skills but nevertheless crafted aesthetic experiences for their audiences to enjoy. The project will also explore how themes such as racial justice, climate change and domestic violence were represented in mediated performances.
- Faculty Mentor: Marcela Fuentes, Associate Professor, School of Communication (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer
- Project Location: Remote
The Geopolitics of AI: How Global LLMs Frame and Shape Understanding of Democracy
The unprecedented growth of AI technology and Large Language Models (LLMs) has become a critical geopolitical concern. This project explores the emerging role of LLMs as a channel of influence and how their framing of political concepts affects public opinion and audience understanding. Specifically, this research focuses on benchmarking how LLMs developed within authoritarian contexts compared to their counterparts developed in more democratic contexts, like the United States and Europe (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude and Mistral).
- Faculty Mentor: Erik Nisbet, Professor, School of Communication (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Remote
Global Capitalism and Law Research Group
The Global Capitalism and Law research group investigates the political, social, legal and normative underpinnings of successful and politically sustainable local, national and global market economies. Members share an interest in legal infrastructures, but the research ambition is larger—to imagine how the rules of global capitalism can be revised to better address concerns that the current system is politically, environmentally and ethically unsustainable.
- Faculty Mentor: Karen Alter, Professor, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences and Pritzker School of Law
- Project Term: Academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid
Global Classroom: Enhancing Linguistic Proficiency and Intercultural Competence in Chinese as a Second Language via Virtual Exchanges
This project examines Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners' linguistic growth and intercultural competence gained from regular virtual exchanges with Chinese native speakers. This project uses conversation analysis, an innovative qualitative method used to study linguistic and sociocultural norms through fine-grained analysis of naturally-occurring conversations, to collect and analyze audio and/or video recordings of conversations between a Chinese learner and a native speaker over the course of one school year.
- Faculty Mentor: Yan Zhou, Assistant Professor, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid
Global Epidemiology of Hidradenitis Suppurativa: A Comparative Analysis of Healthcare Utilization and Disease Burden in the U.S. and Japan
Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) is a debilitating chronic inflammatory skin condition characterized by painful nodules, abscesses, sinus tracts and scarring. Patients with HS often experience painful flare-ups that require emergency department (ED) visits and inpatient care. Previous research (Martin et al., 2025) found a rising frequency and cost of ED visits for pediatric HS patients in the U.S., based on data from the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample. Using large real-world medical record databases, this project seeks to expand this work beyond the U.S. to gain a broader global perspective.
- Faculty Mentor: Ziyou Ren, Assistant Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine (Chicago campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid, remote with one-week trip to Japan
Global Learning and Linking Opportunities to Bring Equity into Learning Health Systems (GLLOBE-LHS)
Despite significant advances in medical science and healthcare systems, health inequities remain a major challenge across the globe. Building on work started in 2024, this project will focus on the co-creation and implementation of a health equity course designed to provide early-career doctoral researchers and professionals in Switzerland with the tools and strategies necessary to effectively incorporate equity-driven approaches into their work.
- Faculty Mentor: Faith Summersett Williams, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine (Chicago campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid with travel to Lucerne, Switzerland
International Aspects of the Hydrogen Economy
Hydrogen is a promising alternative fuel that can reduce pollution from many sectors, including the shipping sector. Project collaborators at Chalmers University in Sweden develop and apply the Global Energy Transition model to understand the role of hydrogen in the broad context of energy systems including conventional fuels like diesel and bunker fuel for vessels and electricity, among many others. This project seeks to collaborate on the development of energy systems models that can provide insights into how Europe and the U.S. can work together to create a hydrogen economy.
- Faculty Mentor: Jennifer Dunn, Professor, McCormick School of Engineering (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: In-person, off-campus, with travel to Gothenburg, Sweden
Modeling & Forecasting Terror Group Behavior
Since October 2024, the Northwestern Security & AI Lab has distributed forecasts of terror attacks by six terrorist groups. These forecasts are generated through advanced machine learning algorithms which learn models of the behavior of a given group. These models are learned from open-source information (e.g., news, think tank reports). This project seeks to expand the forecasts to cover more deadly terror groups.
- Faculty Mentor: V.S. Subhrahmanian, Professor, McCormick School of Engineering (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Remote
Revitalizing Palenquero: Current Language Initiatives in San Basilio de Palenque
This project aims to report on the current revitalization process of the Palenquero language spoken in the community of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia. Beginning in the 20th century, the use of Palenquero declined due to discrimination and members of the community stopped transmitting the language to the next generation. While attitudes have since changed, the language is still not frequently spoken by young people. The purpose of this research is to investigate the current initiatives undertaken by community members to revitalize the language and share educational strategies with community members for the teaching of Palenquero.
- Faculty Mentor: Estilita Maria Cassiani Obeso, Assistant Professor, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid with travel to Colombia
The Role of Digital IDs in Reducing Financial Market Frictions and Improving Financial Inclusion and Credit Market Outcomes in Ethiopia
Do digital IDs reduce frictions in financial markets, and what are the effects of reducing these frictions on financial inclusion and credit market outcomes for households and small businesses, as well as on competition and loan terms offered by banks, fintech lenders, and microfinance institutes? To answer this research question, a team of researchers at Northwestern, Oxford, the World Bank and Ethiopia's Policy Studies Institute are collaborating closely with Ethiopia's National ID Program (NIDP) to randomize the rollout of digital IDs across rural areas at the district level.
- Faculty Mentor: Sean Higgins, Associate Professor, Kellogg School of Management (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Remote with potential travel to Ethiopia
The World We Don't Know: Fallout from the Decline of Foreign Correspondents
This project seeks to research the decline in traditional foreign correspondents and the impact this loss may have had on democracy at home and abroad, a rise in isolationism in America and a decline in knowledge about foreign news and the world for an upcoming book. The book will focus on the importance of foreign correspondents and what the world loses without more of them. The student in this role will assist the project by interviewing foreign editors and correspondents and surveying international news content.
- Faculty Mentor: Bob Rowley, Senior Lecturer, Medill School of Journalism (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer
- Project Location: Remote
Pre-selected Students
Please apply to these positions only if you have received notification of your pre-selection.
Arabic Language App
Arabic Students' Dictionary is currently a beta version online tool to help Arabic language learners across the world look up words by root. Students with a background in computer science and Arabic can help work to transform the basic online tool into a high-functioning app with a multitude of capabilities such as flashcards, favorites, history and a share feature.
- Faculty Mentor: Fatima Khan, Associate Professor, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer
- Project Location: Remote with travel to Egypt
Contemporary Global Receptions of Heart of Darkness
This project explores the reception of and engagements with Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899) in contemporary global artistic production. In the judgment of anti-imperial activist Edward Morel, Conrad’s novella was the most important act of witness to King Leopold’s Congo ever written. The novella has had a vibrant, complex and controversy-fraught reception by critical and creative interpreters and adapters across boundaries of nation and media in the anglophone world. Drawing on primary texts from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean to discuss global readings, adaptations and critiques of Conrad's masterpiece, this project will demonstrate the impact of Conrad's novella through its (primarily but not exclusively) anglophone world reception.
- Faculty Mentor: Christine Froula, Professor, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences and Evan Mwangi, Associate Professor, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer
- Project Location: Hybrid, remote and on-campus
Crossing the Kalunga Line: A Film about Religion, Mourning, and Power in Jamaica
This project seeks to take a documentary film about grief, mourning and community amongst Revivalists, a marginalized indigenous Afro-Christian tradition in Jamaica, to the next phase of production. The film explores tradition in the aftermath of the death of a religious leader and is a teaching tool wherein scholar-practitioners describe the intricacies and central tenets of the tradition through demonstrations and the varied spiritual technologies that believers draw upon to shape their life-worlds.
- Faculty Mentor: KB Dennis Meade, Assistant Professor, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Hybrid with travel to Kingston, Jamaica
Validating the Sexual Relationship and Activities Questionnaire Among Older Adults in a Rural Sub-Saharan African Population
There is growing evidence that sexual health and well-being positively contributes to one’s overall physical, mental and emotional health, and overall quality of life, particularly in older adults. Data on the Sexual Relationship and Activities Questionnaire (SRA-Q) was collected as part of the Centre de Recherche en Santé de Nouna’s 2021 Heidelberg Aging Study, which aimed to understand the burden of multimorbidity, or the presence of multiple health conditions in older individuals living in low-income countries in a sub-Saharan African context. The goal of this project is to submit a publication reporting on the results of this work to a peer-reviewed outlet.
- Faculty Mentor: Emily Ho, Asst. Prof. of Medical Social Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Remote
The World We Don't Know: Fallout from the Decline of Foreign Correspondents
This project seeks to research the decline in traditional foreign correspondents and the impact this loss may have had on democracy at home and abroad, a rise in isolationism in America and a decline in knowledge about foreign news and the world for an upcoming book. The book will focus on the importance of foreign correspondents and what the world loses without more of them. The student in this role will assist the project by interviewing foreign editors and correspondents and surveying international news content.
- Faculty Mentor: Bob Rowley, Senior Lecturer, Medill School of Journalism (Evanston campus)
- Project Term: Summer + academic year
- Project Location: Remote
