Symposium

PURC held its 3rd annual Undergraduate Symposium on Tuesday, April 7th, 2026. It was a great time celebrating the amazing work that undergraduates are doing in the psychology department!

Pictures from the 2026 PURC Symposium can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UerRs3p8G6AvVzHLNgcHD0D9XNiEY5KA?usp=drive_link

**Click here for:** **Program Overview**

2026 – Award Winners

Standard Talks

**1st Place**
Maya Rueda-Cohen
*How Important is Friendship to Adults?: How Age, Parenthood, and Relationship Status Relate to Friendship Valuation Across 66 Countries*

**2nd Place**
Clizia Martini
*Do Alcohol-Associated Cues Disrupt Goal-Directed Behaviour?*

**3rd Place**
Hailey Grace Liem
*Names on Trial: The Effects of Ethnoracial Cues on Judgments of Academic Integrity Violations*

Poster Presentations

**1st Place**
Aira Amjad
*Effects of Aging and Statistical Regularity on Audiovisual Multisensory Integration using the Sound-Induced Flash Illusion (SIFI)*

**2nd Place**
Sophia Joulaei
*How Subjective Age Affects Perceptions of Older Adults*

**2nd Place**
Amir Samadi
*Context-Evoked Anticipatory Activity in the Anterior Olfactory Nucleus Drives Odour Memory*

**2nd Place**
Jayden Tang
*Microglial Inhibition in the Dorsomedial Striatum Modulates Goal-Directed Behavior in Diet-Induced Obesity*

Flash Talks

**1st Place**
Cynthia Lin
*Ingredients to a Good Life: A Thematic Analysis of First-Person Accounts Examining Life Satisfaction Appraisals*

2nd Place
Sangje Park
A New Paradigm for Quantifying Gestalt Perceptual Grouping Based on Tracking Occluded Objects