The 2025 Tulane Research, Innovation and Creativity Summit (TRICS) honors posters with societal impact and technology innovation
 

Miller Dickerson presents her award-winning poster to a TRICS attendee.
  
May 14, 2025

Once home to vaudeville acts, musicals, and disco, the historic Civic Theater—built in 1906—became the 2025 stage for Tulane University’s bold ideas, breakthrough research, and emerging technologies. Against this iconic backdrop, students, faculty, and staff from across Tulane’s schools shared posters and lightning talks at the third Tulane Research, Innovation, and Creativity Summit (TRICS), hosted by the Tulane Innovation Institute and the Tulane Office of Research on April 9–10, 2025. 
 
More than 300 poster abstracts were submitted to be showcased, with over 130 submissions competing for the Tulane Innovation Institute’s prizes, which recognize work demonstrating societal impact or commercial potential through technology development. Now in its second year, the prize program highlights the importance of translating research into solutions for today’s most urgent challenges. 
 
For the first time, industry executives, SSBCI (State Small Business Credit Initiative) venture fund leaders, and angel investors were invited to serve as judges, offering external stakeholders a firsthand look at Tulane’s growing innovation ecosystem. 
 
“For us to move forward and accelerate research into technologies that help the people who need them most, we must continue connecting people, making investments, and providing mentorship, to maximize impact,” said Kimberly Gramm, MBA, PhD, David and Marion Mussafer Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer at the Tulane Innovation Institute. 
 
This year’s winning projects were drawn from a pool of competitors addressing issues such as improving prenatal care in underserved communities, developing antibiotic alternatives, and protecting coastal regions from harmful algal blooms. 
 
The 2025 TRICS poster award winners included

Miller Dickerson, PhD Student  
School of Science and Engineering 
Innovation Prize for Societal Impact | $1,000 
"Development of a Portable Photoacoustic Device for Placental Imaging"    

Miller Dickerson, from Dr. Carolyn Bayer’s Biomedical Functional Imaging Lab, presented a poster demonstrating a portable device that uses photoacoustic imaging to improve prenatal care, particularly for women at risk of preeclampsia. By detecting early signs of complications through imaging generated by sound waves produced when tissue absorbs light, this technology holds promise for bringing critical care to underserved communities lacking access to advanced medical facilities. 
. 
Philip Kucher, MD/PhD Student  
School of Medicine; School of Science and Engineering  
Innovation Prize for Societal Impact 
Honorable Mention | $500  
"Massively Parallel Data Processing of Pathogenic Klebsiella Strains to Characterize Prophage Presence and Predict Infectivity"    

Philip Kucher’s research poster explained a new approach to treating Klebsiella, a bacterium responsible for many hospital-acquired infections, by engineering bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) found within bacterial genomes. His work, advised by Lisa Morici, PhD, and Nicholas Sandoval, PhD, could provide an alternative to traditional antibiotics.   

Pedram Azizi-Hariri, Graduate Student  
School of Science and Engineering  
Innovation Prize for Technology Development | $1,000  
"Sprayable Foams with Algaecides and Flocculants for Harmful Algal Blooms Mitigation"    

Azizi-Hariri, a member of Dr. Vijay John’s lab, presented research on addressing harmful algal blooms, commonly called red tide, which threaten marine ecosystems and human health. The lab’s development of a sprayable foam containing algaecides and flocculants offers a solution that could protect people in coastal communities dependent on fishing and tourism, in addition to protecting marine life. 

Participating in events like TRICS strengthens communication and presentation skills essential for career success and opens doors to valuable networking opportunities with peers, faculty, and future collaborators. As the event grows, it is expected to attract industry leaders, investors, and innovators interested in supporting emerging research from Tulane University. The 2026 TRICS event is scheduled for April 14–16 on Tulane University’s uptown campus in Devlin Fieldhouse.