Students from the NEXIS Student Technology Lab concluded the Fall 2025 semester with a successful Poster Day, highlighting student-driven research projects developed over months of collaboration and hands-on experimentation. The event, held at the School of Information Studies, brought together students, team leaders, and lab leadership to celebrate semester-long work across emerging technologies and creativity within the NEXIS community, while reinforcing the iSchool’s emphasis on experiential, student-driven research.
Poster Day serves as a culminating experience for NEXIS members, providing a professional setting in which students present semester-long research and reflect on their development. Designed to mirror academic and industry poster sessions, the event allows students to practice communicating complex technical concepts in a clear and engaging way.
Beyond individual presentations, the event promotes cross-team learning and community building, giving students the opportunity to explore projects outside their own focus areas and gain exposure to a wide range of emerging technologies. Many teams also used the showcase to discuss how their projects evolved over time—highlighting challenges, iterations, and insights gained throughout the semester.
Held every semester, Poster Day reinforces NEXIS’s experiential learning model by celebrating both completed projects and ongoing research efforts that will continue into future terms.
Event Highlights and Student Recognition
At the Fall 2025 Poster Day, over 50 undergraduate and graduate students showcased work in the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, virtual reality, and 3D printing. Applications ranging from digital media analytics and healthcare to immersive and fabrication-based technology were depicted in the posters.
The AI Healthcare Team received the Best Project Award for Fall 2025 for their project on melanoma detection using deep learning networks, which was acknowledged by the NEXIS eBoard for its technical impact and rigor and showed how machine learning techniques can be applied to real-world healthcare problems.
The runner-up project, developed by the AI Social Media Team, showcased an AI Video Coach designed to deliver intelligent performance analytics for digital content creators.
Throughout the event, students discussed methodologies, design decisions, and future implications of their work, engaging attendees in conversations that reflected both technical depth and real-world relevance.
About NEXIS
Founded in 2013, NEXIS began as a small research group within the iSchool and has since evolved into a multidisciplinary student technology lab. Today, NEXIS supports a growing community of undergraduate and graduate students interested in applied research and emerging technologies.
The lab’s mission is described as “the pursuit of collaborative research in the spirit of student-driven discovery and innovation in the information field.”
NEXIS members engage in a structured project process that includes: 
- Exploration
- Ideation
- Development
- Pitchouts at the end of each semester
Through this process, students develop a collaborative and inquisitive mindset while gaining expertise in project management, research, design thinking, and technical implementation.
At the beginning of each semester, students can apply to join one of numerous teams, such as AI, Data Science, VR, and 3D Printing. After being chosen, teams work together to create their projects by selecting a study topic that is in line with their common interests and holding frequent meetings. While some teams pursue new ideas every term, encouraging both depth and experimentation, others continue to refine projects across several semesters.
By providing students with opportunities to develop technical skills, interact across disciplines, and present work in a formal academic context, NEXIS plays a crucial part in the iSchool’s experiential learning ecosystem.
Looking Ahead
NEXIS’s continuous dedication to student-driven research and hands-on learning is reflected in Poster Day. Students will continue to advance current projects, investigate new research avenues, and contribute to the lively innovation culture at the iSchool as the lab looks ahead to the spring semester. Visit the iSchool’s NEXIS program page and keep an eye out for upcoming student innovation showcases to find out more about NEXIS and upcoming events.