YURC 2025
About YURC
Since its establishment in 2015, the Yale Undergraduate Research Conference (YURC) has served as a platform for undergraduates to present their work, listen to world-renowned leaders in research, and connect with one another to form an enriching research community across diverse fields of study.
2025 Keynote Speakers
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Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan is the founder and director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) in Washington, D.C., a senior research scholar at Princeton University, and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington. A leading expert in antibiotic resistance, Dr. Laxminarayan has worked since 1995 to improve global understanding of this issue as a critical shared resource challenge. His research and advocacy have brought global attention to drug resistance, including presentations at the United Nations General Assembly and contributions to President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s antimicrobial resistance working group.
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Brody Mullins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government, exploring corporate influence's rise in Washington since the 1970s. Over nearly two decades at The Wall Street Journal, he uncovered major intersections of business and politics, exposing scandals that led to new laws and regulations for government officials and lobbyists. In addition to the Pulitzer, he has received the George Polk Award and twice won the Everett Dirksen Award for excellence in congressional reporting. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Politico, and The Atlantic and has been featured on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and NPR. A graduate of Northwestern University, he lives in Washington, D.C.
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Dr. Edward I. Altman is the Max L. Heine Emeritus Professor of Finance, at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and the Director of Research in Credit and Debt Markets at the NYU Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions. He is best known as the creator of the Altman Z-Score, a revolutionary model for predicting corporate bankruptcy that is used globally to this day. Dr. Altman has published over 160 articles and 24 books, and has earned numerous honors, including the Graham & Dodd Scroll and honorary doctorates from Lund University and the Warsaw School of Economics.
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Dr. A. Douglas Stone is a highly accomplished researcher in theoretical physics. His current work is in optical physics and quantum computing. Stone's 2013 book, Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Swabian, has been lauded as accessible for both scientists and casual readers. It won the 2014 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award in 2014. Stone is the Carl Morse Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at Yale, and principal investigator of the A. Douglas Stone research group.
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Dr. Tamar Szabó Gendler is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, with secondary appointments in Psychology, Humanities, and Cognitive Science. Internationally recognized for her contributions to philosophical methodology, cognitive science, and epistemology, her work explores how imagination and intuition influence human reasoning and understanding. She is the author of influential books such as Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology (2013) and Thought Experiments: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases (2000), as well as the widely cited essay "Alief and Belief." Dr. Gendler was the first female Chair of Yale’s Philosophy Department and has received numerous accolades for teaching and interdisciplinary scholarship, holding fellowships from prestigious institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.