The Graduate School is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 James L. Fisher Outstanding Thesis Competition at Illinois State University. The thesis competition is designed to provide recognition of outstanding master’s theses. The award is named in honor of James L. Fisher, a renowned scholar and exceptional graduate of the University who served as a professor, administrator, and vice president at Illinois State. The following students exemplify the highest-quality research in their respective fields of study.
Winners of the thesis competition are recognized at the college level, including one overall university winner and runner-up. Each academic college holds a local competition and submits their winner to participate in the university-wide competition. The College of Arts and Sciences, due to their size, nominates three across their three divisions (Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences). At the university level, the nominations are reviewed and selected by the research subcommittee of the Graduate Council.
All finalists receive $200 awards. The university runner-up receives an additional $100 award, while the overall university winner receives an additional $200 award. The thesis selected to represent Illinois State at the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools will also receive an additional $200.
University-wide winner and runner-up
Sumeet Paramaj (Department of Technology)—Winner
Sumeet Paramaj’s thesis, Hydronic Parking Lots: A Solution for Urban Heat Island Mitigation, explores an innovative approach to a global challenge through the concept of hydronic parking lots, a system that uses circulating water beneath pavement surfaces to absorb and repurpose excess heat. As cities grow and temperatures rise, addressing the urban heat Island (UHI) effect has become an increasingly urgent priority for sustainable urban design. His research examines how this technology could transform parking lots, one of the most heat-intensive urban features, into tools for temperature regulation and energy efficiency. By reimagining a common urban space, Paramaj’s work contributes to broader conversations about climate resilience, environmental design, and the future of sustainable infrastructure.
“Mr. Paramaj’s thesis addresses a pressing environmental challenge: the elevated surface temperatures of urban parking lots, which often result in urban temperatures that are 10 degrees higher than those in surrounding rural areas. His work focuses not only on reducing surface temperatures through hydronic parking systems, but also on capturing and repurposing excess heat. These systems incorporate subsurface heat exchangers—typically coils carrying low-temperature fluids such as cold water—that facilitate thermal exchange. This approach is both innovative and practical, offering surface temperature reduction while enabling the reuse of captured heat for domestic hot water in nearby buildings, thereby adding environmental and economic value,” said Dr. Sundeep Inti, associate professor in the Department of Technology.
Kitty Davies (Wonsook Kim School of Art)—Runner-up
Through a blend of theory, identity, and visual expression, Kitty Davies’ thesis, The Body Is On, explores the intersections of queer embodiment, pervert as political identity, the arriving climate catastrophe, and difficulty in artmaking. Drawing on the philosophical frameworks of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Davies weaves together personal and conceptual narratives to question what futurity means in a world shaped by both environmental and political instability. Their work challenges audiences to consider how artmaking can serve as both reflection and resistance. Davies was also selected to represent the University at the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) and will compete for the MAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award.
“Artists often experience blurred boundaries between work and life—our work is our lives, and our lives are, inform, and generate the work. The philosophical and material approaches in our practices become embedded far beyond the confines of a studio. Davies illustrates how their work reflects within the cultural hierarchy, from paintings, sculptures, performance, and exhibitions to t-shirts, embracing and making their own the labels society thrusts on marginalized groups. The Body Is On demonstrates a committed and rigorous three-year inquiry into the rhizomatic territories of power, self, culture, anxieties, fears, and pleasure, centering the body itself as a way of knowing,” stated Dr. Ruth Burke, associate professor in the School of Art.
College-level winners
Adina Fazyl (School of Biological Sciences)
In Mechanical Force Detection and Resilience in The Musculature of Caenorhabditis Elegans, Adina Fazyl explores how muscles sense and respond to physical forces—a process essential for movement, growth, and recovery from stress or disease. Her thesis uses caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny roundworm often used in biological research, to study two key proteins that help muscles detect and adapt to mechanical strain. These proteins, which have counterparts in humans, play a vital role in maintaining muscle health and stability. By examining how these proteins interact, Fazyl’s work sheds light on how muscles grow stronger through activity and how diseases, like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, weaken them. Her findings help scientists better understand the mechanics of muscle resilience, offering insights that could one day inform new treatments for muscle-related diseases.
“In just two and a half years, Adina produced a body of work that is rare even for doctoral students to achieve. Her research yielded a five-chapter thesis, which led to multiple first-author publications, 22 poster and four oral presentations at local, regional, and national meetings, and including a study on mechanoreceptor function in C. elegans (Chapter III) now published in μPubs Biology (1), and a biophysical analysis published (Chapter IV) in Biophysical Journal (2). Adina worked on these manuscripts independently and produced high-quality drafts requiring minimal guidance,” stated Dr. Andrés Vidal-Gadea, professor of Biological Sciences.
Tori Lomelino (Department of Psychology)
In Tori Lomelino’s thesis, Supervisor Support and Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Roles of Work-Life Balance and Perceived Employability with Gender as A Moderator, she examines how the support employees receive from their supervisors influences how satisfied they feel at work. Her study looks at how well employees balance work and personal life, how confident they feel in their ability to find and keep a job, and possible explanations for a connection between the two. Through survey data from full-time employees across the U.S., Lomelino found that when supervisors provide strong support, employees tend to feel increased job satisfaction. This study highlights the significant role of perceived employability as a mediator, providing valuable insights for both theory and practice.
“Tori makes a strong case for the importance of examining the influence of supervisors on employees’ job-related attitudes, work-life balance, and career paths. She was able to collect data from over 300 full-time employees through the online platform Prolific. This can often be a challenging method of data collection given concerns about the quality of the data and potential false responses, but Tori was diligent and careful in putting into place safeguards used by others in the field and her final dataset was trustworthy. She then did excellent work in analyzing potential mediation effects of the impact of supervisor support on employability and work-life balance as well as the possible moderating impact of gender,” stated Dr. Kimberly T. Schneider, professor in the School of Psychology.
Miriam Wolff (School of Communication)
Miriam Wolff’s research, titled A New Theater for Age-Old Social Patterns: An Exploratory Study of Interpersonal Dynamics and the Overlay of Gender Within AI Companionship, explores how people form relationships with artificial intelligence (AI) companions and how ideas about gender influence those interactions. Using the program Replika, participants chatted with AI companions that presented as different genders, then shared their thoughts through surveys and interviews. Wolff found that users’ comfort in opening up to their AI companions depended on how responsive and “human-like” the AI seemed. Her work sheds light on how human emotions, technology, and social norms intersect, offering valuable insights for designing more emotionally aware and inclusive AI systems.
“Not only is Ms. Wolff’s thesis topically intriguing and pointing to implications for ever-developing artificial intelligence, it is incredibly well-written. In particular, the integration of theory is so clear, one less familiar with the field of interpersonal communication might not be aware of how novel Ms. Wolff’s approach is, in identifying cultural, relational patterns in what is typically a technology and media-focused context. In turn, the use of interpersonal communication theory allows for commentary not only on AI interaction and companions but for broader cultural commentary on perceptions of, and expectations for, gender and relationships,” said Dr. Lindsey Thomas, associate professor in the School of Communication.
