What is a Mellon Forum?
Mellon Senior Forums at Branford College seek to foster in our Seniors the sense of belonging to the community of scholars. Organized in the form of dinner meetings to which both Seniors and their advisers are invited, they provide some of our most talented students the opportunity to present the results of their independent research projects. The Forums also offer the possibility of especially close interaction between the Head of the College, the Dean, and Branford Seniors in comfortable and intimate surroundings. Branford holds a number of Senior Forums in the Spring semester. After dinner is served, students deliver research papers, usually fifteen to twenty minutes in length, to an audience of fellow Seniors. Attempts are made to cover a wide range of topics in various branches of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Natural Sciences. Each paper is immediately followed by a lively and intense question and answer period which permits the Senior to clarify (and perhaps modify) his/her critical stance.
Branford’s Mellon Forum coordinators are HOC De La Cruz, Dean Galindo, and resident fellow Steve Blum. Each senior participating in the Forums are matched with one of our Graduate Affiliates who mentor them. An info session is held in the Fall semester for those seniors interested in participating.
What is the Mellon Forum schedule for Spring 2026?
January 13th
Janic Aguirre
“Traditions and Intentions: Pseudo-glyph Writing in Classic and Post-Classic Societies in Ancient El Salvador and Honduras”
The Copan valley and Western El Salvador are known for the presence of pseudo-glyphic writings painted and inscribed on ceramic objects (Longyear, 1952; Sharer 1979; Viel 1993). Different styles such as Copador, Arambala, Gualpopa, and Machacal contain varieties of signs that look similar to Maya hieroglyphic writing found elsewhere but are not necessarily legible. Several scholars have systematically studied pseudo-glyphs on Maya vessels: Longyear (1952), Calvin (2006), Aldana (2011), Caballero Diaz (2017), and Houston (2018). This project seeks to contribute to pseudo-glyphic studies by expanding Calvin’s Pseudo-Glyph catalogue and comparing different pseudo-glyphic signs across archaeological sites. This project tests the following hypothesis. While in certain Maya societies pseudo-glyphs played a role as a symbolic alternative to bone fide hieroglyphs, pseudo-glyphs found in regions with Copador were the product of deliberate, stylized form of expression. We test this theory by analyzing the degree to which pseudo-glyphs repeat across sites and analyzing the burial and provenience these vessels were found in. We hope this thesis can shed light on larger questions, such as the transmission of hieroglyphic knowledge across the ancient Mesoamerican world.
Sydney Scheller
“Removing Single Points of Failure in Privacy-Preserving Record Linking Systems for Medical Data”
General patient information and test results often lack the level of detail required for modern medical and public health research, which increasingly relies on large-scale, granular datasets. To support this work, infrastructure systems must securely connect records across multiple sources while ensuring that sensitive patient information remains private. Privacy-preserving record linking (PPRL) systems are designed to achieve this goal by linking datasets without revealing patient identities or increasing risk to the individuals whose data is used.
This thesis presents a PPRL-compatible system that is secure by design rather than relying on staying ahead of the technical arms race. Security is achieved by eliminating single points of failure, specifically the researcher and the encrypted shared file system, which are the primary sources of vulnerability in current systems. The proposed infrastructure preserves the existing regulatory mechanisms for data procurement, such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Data Use Agreements (DUAs), while enhancing both the security of the system and the researcher’s workflow.
The first half of the thesis evaluates current practices for handling sensitive medical data, including login protocols, access controls, and regulatory oversight, against a non-collusion threat model. The second half constructs a new PPRL-consistent infrastructure that mitigates identified risks.
This system demonstrates that it is possible to create PPRL infrastructure that both facilitates legitimate research and maintains strong privacy protections, even in the presence of adversaries. By shifting from a reliance on technical arms races to security by design, this approach provides a robust framework for future medical research infrastructure.
Lucy Ton That
“‘You Can’t Destroy My True Red Heart’: A Reading of the 2008 Translations of Hồ Xuân Hương”
The phrase “you can’t destroy my true red heart” comes from Marilyn Chin’s 2008 translation of Hồ Xuân Hương, an eighteenth-century Vietnamese poet famed for her use of the erotic lyric. Together, with John Balaban, a second major translator of Hồ’s work, Chin and Hồ comprise the protagonists of this essay. In this essay I read Hồ Xuân Hương’s literary afterlife through her two contemporary American translations. I use different points of comparison to evaluate the continuities and divergences between the two translations, from the “scandal” of the “Marichiko” translations to the subfield of female poetic performance with the political poetess; from Anne Cheng’s critical work on Ornamentalism to the acrimonious letters sent back and forth between the translators and their allies. This essay sets out to chronicle a literary dispute between John Balaban and Marilyn Chin over who has the right to translate across nation, race, culture, and gender and concludes with the impossibility of that task, instead seeing Balaban and Chin—rather than as adversaries—as two (unwitting) collaborators.
January 20th
Daniela Chaclan & Victoria Fenton
“On the Brink of a Nuclear Iran”
Iran’s nuclear policy has long been a point of tension for the United States, Israel, and Iran’s neighboring countries in the Middle East. Iran’s theocratic regime structure is difficult to assess and impossible to predict from a foreign perspective. The recent bombings in June and the ongoing protests in Iran demonstrate how quickly policy can shift.
While Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon and states their nuclear enrichment program is entirely peaceful, U.S. intelligence analysts generally believe that Iran is seeking to maintain a “threshold” capability, meaning Tehran has the knowledge and infrastructure to produce a nuclear weapon in a fairly short period of time should its leaders decide to do so.
This Global Affairs capstone project aimed to analyze how likely it is for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon in the next two years and the implications that would follow. As a capstone group, our team developed a memo for our client Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm with offices in New York, London, and San Francisco. Together, we will share our findings and discuss recent events that have affected our analysis since completing our capstone project.
Andrew Tran
“Teaching Language Models to Understand Molecules: Integrating Language and Molecular Structure in Biomedical AI”
Modern biomedical research uses machine learning models to understand molecules such as small-molecule drugs and proteins. However, most existing models rely on only a single way of representing molecules, such as text descriptions or two-dimensional structural representations. At the same time, models that emphasize molecular structure often fail to incorporate the vast body of biomedical text that describes molecular function and interactions.
This work presents MolLM, a unified language model that learns simultaneously from biomedical text, two-dimensional molecular structures, and three-dimensional molecular structures. By integrating these complementary sources of information, the model is able to perform a range of downstream tasks, including matching molecules to written descriptions, predicting molecular properties, generating descriptions of molecules, and editing molecules based on text prompts.
January 27th
Luca Girodon
“On The Brink of a Nuclear Iran”
Iran’s nuclear policy has long been a point of tension for the United States, Israel, and regional partners. While Tehran states its nuclear enrichment program is peaceful, the reality of a “threshold” state means the infrastructure to produce a nuclear weapon exists in a short timeframe should leadership decide to do so. This Global Affairs capstone project, developed for the advisory firm Greenmantle, analyzed the implications of Iran moving beyond this threshold.
This presentation focuses primarily on the strategic and military architecture of a United States response to such a potential escalation. The discussion will explore the mechanics of U.S. policy, ranging from kinetic to cyber disruption and intensified sabotage targeting nuclear command and control networks. Finally, we will investigate the potential shift in long-term U.S. posture from non-proliferation toward a policy of permanent containment and implicit regime change. By focusing on these response mechanisms, the presentation provides a detailed look at the strategic path Washington would likely follow in the event of Iranian nuclearization.
Rena Liu
“The Labor Market Impacts of US Grocery Mergers, 2011 to 2016”
Roughly 5 million Americans work at grocery stores and supercenters (IBISWorld). Since the 1980s, waves of mergers and acquisitions have swept through the grocery industry. As a result, independent groceries and small chains operate fewer stores today, falling behind companies like Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, and Costco. If consolidation gives people fewer options for where to work, then grocery companies might have the power to decrease wages. On the other hand, grocery workers may be able to find employment in many industries beyond grocery. I track grocery mergers from 2011 to 2016 and use a difference-in-differences analysis to study what happens to wages and employment rates in US counties where mergers took place.
Daniel Zhang
“Oceanic Chorus”
I compare Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy to examine the ideological import of an enduring literary form: the Greek chorus. Originating in Athenian drama, the chorus is a collective body that offers reactions, judgments, and interpretations in response to a play’s events. As such, the chorus embodied Athens’ burgeoning democratic spirit by expressing the values of the play’s political community—and often that of the spectators—in a unified voice. I argue, however, that Sophocles and Cusk alike are suspicious of the chorus’ claim to aggregate and distill multiple perspectives through single-voiced summary. They wonder what is lost when the whole eclipses the part, an apprehension that Oedipus and Outline both dramatize. I also trace how this tension unfolds within the broader reception history of the chorus, by turns figured as a utopian commune and a senseless mob. Mapping an intellectual history that draws from diverse episodes, from the revolutions of 1848 to contemporary innovations in large language models, my essay interrogates the fantasy of representing many voices through one.
February 3rd
Aiden Healy
“A great yearning, a greater Life: themes of Reconciliation and World in the Thought of Goethe and Hannah Arendt”
My project aims to understand reconciliation as a process by which humans enter into communion with each other and their surrounding world. First, I examine the notion of reconciliation at the heart of Goethe’s Faust. In this study, I look at both nature and the human person as mediators between Faust and his world. Through these mediators, Faust eventually merits salvation: an eternal reconciliation with the world. Turning to Arendt, I ask if such reconciliation is possible even in the wake of crises which have destroyed our trust in the legitimacy of political institutions and the capacity of human nature for good. In particular, I analyze how storytelling may facilitate the reconciliation of persons with the public sphere in times of great darkness.
Javier Pardo
“The Impossible Aesthetic: The Pairing of the Plantain and the Crabapple in Dream of the Red Chamber”
In Chapter 17 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Baoyu, his father, and a group of his fathers “literati-guests” tour the newly constructed garden 大觀園, coming up with names and couplets for the garden’s various attraction sites. At what will later become Baoyu’s residence, the group encounters multiple plantains growing across from a crabapple tree. Baoyu insists that the “red” and “green” imagery conjured by the two plants must both be used to name the location. But the two plants have different seasons, and from a botanical standpoint, it doesn’t make much sense for them to appear beside each other. Plantains have a tradition of aesthetic impossibility, which can date back to “The Plantain in the Snow”, painted by Tang poet and artist Wang Wei 王維. This project seeks to explore the inherited literary conventions attached to crabapples and plantains, specifically: How does the author, Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹, use plant imagery to negotiate between truth and fiction, void 空 and emotion 情?
Noe Topping
“‘We Care Too!!’: Warren County Youth and the Fight for an Environmentally Just Future”
In September of 1982, hundreds of residents in Warren County, North Carolina, took to the streets to protest the siting of a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill in their community. Farmers, teachers, pastors, mothers, and young students lay in the roads to block massive trucks from dumping the toxic soil into the landfill. They believed that their community had been chosen by Governor James B. Hunt and the EPA because it was poor, rural, and predominantly Black. Over six weeks of protests, more than 500 people were arrested, including children as young as four years old. Although the protests were ultimately unsuccessful in stopping the landfill, they are largely seen as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.
Despite this recognition, there remains little scholarship on the participation and experiences of young people. Thus, my thesis aims to answer the question: how were young people empowered to become active participants in the Warren County PCB protests? Recognizing that environmental justice is as much about access to information as it is about clean air and water, I worked with Warren County community members to design a curriculum for local middle school students about the movement and the broader history of the county. Grounded in place-based pedagogy that emphasizes community and environmental stewardship, this curriculum seeks to empower students to identify injustice, understand their community’s history, and see themselves as capable actors in shaping a more just future.
February 10th
Ishan Narra
“The Characterization of Rhenium on Silicon for Applications in Superconducting Quantum Computers”
Quantum computers are an emerging technology that possess the ability, if realized, to help solve a plethora of scientific problems, ranging from developing pharmaceuticals to simulating the universe’s origins. In the past two decades, circuits made out of superconducting materials have emerged as an extremely promising platform to build quantum computers. However, in order to reach practical quantum computing capabilities, significant progress needs to be made on protecting quantum bits (qubits) from external noise which can cause them to lose their information. Recently, circuits made out of tantalum films deposited onto sapphire and silicon substrates have shown to exhibit lower information losses compared to other materials combinations. Still, other superconducting refractory metals such as rhenium have been largely unexplored. In this talk, I will discuss my investigation of rhenium thin films deposited onto silicon wafers as a potential candidate for high-performance superconducting circuits. I observe that superconductivity can be observed in these thin films, and note a series of material characterizations of these films which could lead to a greater understanding of how they would perform as qubits.
Laura Ospina
“Signals of Authority or Danger?: Security Structures and Civil-Military Relations in the Colombian Armed Conflict”
A regular discussion of state security structures in civilian settings might evoke echoes of omnipresent surveillance or repressive checkpoints. In this easy-to-reach-for imagery, the built environment of conflict — military and police bases, walls, concrete barriers, and the like — antagonistically projects state authority and discipline to civilians. But what role do security structures play when the state seeks to instead gain civilian confidence during a domestic insurgency? In an ideal scenario for the state, a structure communicates to civilians that the physical protection of the state is both near and substantive. In practice, however, this may be far from the truth.
My thesis explores whether proximity to military bases and other state security installations influenced Colombian civilians’ confidence in the Armed Forces during the late ’90s and early ’00s. Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict — characterized by a spike in confidence in the Armed Forces post-2002 and attacks on military bases and police stations by non-state actors — offers rich case material. In August 2025, I traveled to Colombia to conduct interviews with nine national security experts, including researchers, former government officials, and a former high-ranking general. My qualitative findings will be complemented by an in-progress quantitative analysis of public opinion survey data.
February 17th
Mia Cortes Castro
“Mothers’ Tongues: A Collection of Poems”
“Mother’s Tongues” is a collection of fifty poems that explores the experiences of undocumented women in New Haven as they live and work in the city. As a collection of poems, it reckons with themes of womanhood, motherhood, and the purpose of life and its difficulties, exploring how these themes are affected by instincts of survival and feelings of displacement. All of the poems were inspired by interviews with twelve women, who were asked open-ended questions about their experiences with immigration in New Haven, and the reconstruction process that follows it; each of the poems is either based directly on events or themes discussed in an interview, or is an exploration of a phrase said during it. The collection focuses both on the women telling their stories and on the linguistic tensions that come with being a poetic voice and attempting to accurately represent translated emotional descriptions.
Tenzin Dhondup
“Deported by Hospitals and Ambulances: Medical Repatriation and the Privatization of Migration Control, 1945–Present”
This thesis examines the practice of medical repatriation, the cross-border transfer of ill or injured patients by hospitals and ambulances, from 1945 to the present. In America, the practice has drawn public attention through cases in which severely ill, injured, or comatose patients have been expelled from hospitals and deported without due process. These cases have generated public outrage and scrutiny, yet they represent only the most visible instances of a far broader and largely hidden phenomenon. Because medical repatriation is obscured by medical privacy laws, there are no public databases that systematically document its scope or operation. In response, this thesis develops new and inventive methods for investigating the practice using publicly accessible sources. This thesis contributes an original archive of 720 newspaper articles from international news databases, alongside a supplementary dataset of 75 GoFundMe campaigns that document family efforts to secure medical repatriation or resist forced return. Together, these materials illuminate practices that are otherwise obscured within institutional systems of care. The thesis situates medical repatriation within a global landscape that includes undocumented patients in American hospitals, temporary migrant workers in Canada, Overseas Filipino Workers, and injured travelers managed through private insurance systems. Across these contexts, the project shows how decisions about care, belonging, and removal are increasingly delegated to private actors such as hospitals, employers, insurers, and transport companies. By reconstructing the conditions that make medical repatriation possible, the thesis renders visible how sites of care have become sites of control within contemporary health and migration systems.
Seung Min Baik Kang
“Confrontations at the Border: Veterans for Peace and the Central American Peace and Solidarity Movement, 1965-1991”
On June 7, 1988, 106 veteran volunteers and 37 vehicles carrying over thirty tons of humanitarian aid gathered in Laredo, Texas, a city at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Veterans Peace Convoy (VPC), organized by groups including Veterans for Peace (VFP), sought to deliver aid to Nicaragua in solidarity with the Sandinistas amid the Reagan Administration’s staunch support for the Contras. But Washington deemed the convoy a violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, sparking a national confrontation over the criminalization of humanitarian aid.
This thesis traces an institutional history of the VFP within the Central America Peace and Solidarity Movement (CAPSM), arguing that veterans’ role in the movement has been largely overlooked in the historiography. Drawing on archival collections from Swarthmore College, the Wisconsin Historical Society, Yale University as well as oral histories conducted by the author, this thesis also uses the VFP’s participation in the VPC as a case study of Cold War border politics, illustrating how the border functioned to restrict entry and exit. The convoy ultimately reached Managua on July 29, 1988, and its subsequent legal victory in Veterans Peace Convoy v. Schultz opened the border (so to speak), marking a new model of transnational solidarity—an enduring legacy of the VFP and the CAPSM at large.