Schedule Highlights

The following is a highlighted list of confirmed sessions taking place at IFoRE ‘26. Events and times are subject to change. Official schedule will be available here and in the Whova app closer to the conference start.

Thursday, November 5, 2026

  • Sigma Xi Business Meeting

  • Assembly of Delegates

Friday, November 6, 2026

10:00 a.m. Welcome to IFoRE

10:15 a.m.‍ ‍Young Investigator Award presentation

11:00 a.m. Concurrent sessions

  • Science in Society

    • Alison Warren - From Insight to Implementation: Positioning Loneliness as a Clinical Vital Sign in Primary Care

    • Bobby Warren - Why Frontline Healthcare Work Rarely Becomes Published Evidence and How to Fix It

    • Oziomachukwu Onuselogu - From Silos to Action: Translating Climate-Driven Disease Research into Public Understanding

  • Discovery to Marketplace

    • Lena Neufeld - Engineering the Future of Human Health: A Convergent Roadmap for Translating Innovations into Clinical Realities

    • Mayank Kejriwal - Scientist-Founders and Exponential Science: Translating Research Ideas into Scalable Tools

    • Deborah Good - Through the Looking Glass: From First Gen Student to CEO

12:10 p.m. Walston Chubb Award presentation

12:50 p.m.‍ ‍Concurrent sessions

  • Origins of Wonder

    • Jylana Sheats - Discover Discovery: Storytelling and the Early Experiences That Shape Scientific Identity Across Disciplines

    • Vanya Lavu - Where Curiosity Begins: Turning Lived Experiences into Scientific Identity and Thoughtful Communication

  • Mentorship

    • Brandy Whitford - From Curiosity to Impact: How Ideas Evolve into Direction, Innovation, and Real-World Outcomes

2:00 p.m.‍ ‍Plenary session - TBD

3:10 p.m. Concurrent sessions

  • Origins of Wonder

    • Ameya Balaji - Closing the Gap with NeuroScreen: A Novel Web-Based Approach to Accessible Stroke and Migraine with Aura Screening

    • Samarth Lamba - A Quantum Inspired Generalization of the Classical Game Battleship

  • Interdisciplinary Research & Mentorship

    • Sara Kaufman - The Culture We Culture: Student Leadership in Science and Society

    • Ricardo Muller Bottura - Genetics and Sports Performance: Bridging Genomics and Physiology in Human Performance

    • Ruslan Kurmashev - Why early Autism Research still fails families and how Interdisciplinary Science can change that

  • The Future

    • Akhlesh Lakhtakia - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in Artificial Intelligence

4:20 p.m. Plenary session - TBD

Saturday, November 7, 2026

10:00 a.m. Welcome remarks

10:15 a.m. McGovern Award presentation

11:00 a.m. Concurrent sessions

  • Ethics, Rigor, & Truthfulness

    • Eleni Konsolaki - Hybrid Minds: Why Anthropomorphism and Dehumanization Are Not Opposites

    • Arvind Kumar Akula - Building Trustworthy AI in Financial Systems: A Multi-Layer Guardrail Architecture for Autonomous Decision-Making

    • Fredrick Omogah-Protecting the Invisible Participant: Ethics, Cybersecurity, and Trust in Digital Health Research

  • Discovery to Marketplace

    • Ketki Kalele - Learning Beyond Limits: AI, Simulation & Medical Science

    • Raj Paresh Thaker - The Architecture of Interoperability: Scaling Ethical AI Infrastructure from DoD Research to Global Industrial Deployment

    • Shishir Tewari - Skills, Not Prompts: Building an AI-Native Data Engineering SDLC

  • Mentorship & Interdisciplinary Research

    • Olivia Patsalos - Physiological and pharmacological variables affecting reflective thinking

    • Torben Heinbockel - The Mentor Next Door: How Near-Peer Mentorship Builds Young Scientists, and Changes the Mentor Too

12:10 p.m.‍ ‍Plenary session - TBD

1:20 p.m.‍ ‍Plenary session - TBD‍ ‍

2:30 p.m. Concurrent sessions

  • Mentorship

    • Christine Rabinak - The Human Side of Research Leadership: Building Healthy and Productive Research Teams

  • Science in Society

    • Daniel Zhang - Science Doesn't End at the Lab Bench: Building a Cancer Education Movement as a Student Researcher

    • Dan Rubenstein - AI in Conservation Research and Education

  • The Future

    • Daniel Reddy - It Looks Good on Paper – Impacts of Paper-Based Devices Ranging from Clinical Diagnostics to Internet-of-Things

    • Maryann Benny Fernandes - Building the Future of Planetary Defense: From Detection to Decision and Mitigation

    • Alekhya Buragadda - Deep Learning for Neuroimaging: Explore the use of deep learning algorithms in analyzing neuroimaging data

    • Sohag Maitra - Legacy by Design: How ML is Rewriting the Scientific Method

3:40 p.m.‍ ‍IFoRE Award Ceremony

  • Procter Prize presentation

  • IFoRE Student Research Awards & induction ceremony

  • President-elect remarks