Millennium Café

Breakthrough research doesn’t change the world if no one hears about it. The Researcher to Rockstar initiative helps Penn State researchers learn how to communicate their discoveries, connect with industry and collaborators, and expand the reach of their work beyond traditional academic channels. In this short talk, we’ll share how researchers can amplify their impact without becoming full-time marketers (and offering Penn State resources to help amplify your message).

Todd Price | Office of the Senior VP for Research

This talk will overview recent research on human tendency to over-trust and under-trust AI. It will describe the role played by cognitive heuristics (or mental shortcuts) in shaping user perceptions, with a particular focus on machine heuristic. With data from experiments comparing human and AI sources and gatekeepers, it will delineate the effect of both positive and negative machine heuristics upon user trust. Finally, it will suggest ways to mitigate the effect of heuristics and achieve better trust calibration.

S. Shyam Sundar | Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications

Pennsylvania is already experiencing the impacts of climate change, from more frequent extreme weather events to growing risks for infrastructure, agriculture, and public health. In response, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and seven other state agencies partnered with Penn State to establish Prepare PA, a statewide climate resilience network. Built on Penn State’s land‑grant mission and statewide presence, Prepare PA provides communities with access to climate data, technical assistance, education, and peer networks tailored to local needs. This talk introduces Prepare PA and explores how coordinated, equity‑centered approaches can help move communities from climate planning to real‑world action.

Jacqueline O’Connor | Mechanical Engineering

Gold can be assembled into ultra‑small clusters with precisely defined atomic structures, creating what are known as “superatoms”—nanoscale building blocks that behave like individual atoms but with tunable properties. These gold nanoclusters exhibit unusual electronic behavior and strong interactions between electrons and their spins due to gold’s intrinsic properties. As a result, they show exceptionally high levels of spin polarization while remaining stable in liquid solutions, a rare combination. This talk will highlight recent progress in designing and understanding these spin‑active nanomaterials and discuss the key challenges that must be addressed to use them in future quantum information technologies.

Ken Knappenberger | Chemistry

Monitoring wound healing today often relies on delayed lab tests or visual inspection, making it difficult to track changes in real time. This talk introduces a compact sensing chip that measures multiple complementary chemical signals from wounds using a flexible, low-cost material and a scalable manufacturing approach. I will share how this work can evolve into wearable and minimally invasive systems, and welcome cross-disciplinary ideas.

Amir Asgharian | Electrical Engineering | Ebrahimi Lab

Nanoplastics in soils are continuously exposed to chemically and biologically complex soil solutions that can modify their surface properties and influence their environmental fate. My work examines how interactions with dissolved organic matter, microbial metabolites, minerals, and natural colloids drive eco‑corona formation, aggregation, and changes in colloidal stability. Together, these processes play a central role in controlling the environmental behavior and fate of nanoplastics in terrestrial systems.

Yingxue Yu | Ecosystem Science & Management