F&M Stories

At Franklin & Marshall College, we connect our students with extraordinary opportunities so they can accomplish great things in their four years on campus. Here are just a few of their stories.

04/22/2026

Winging It: F&M Supercomputer Powers Biologist’s Local Conservation Efforts

For this Franklin & Marshall biologist, every bird song and flap of wings is essential data. With the support of the campus supercomputers, Dan Ardia and his student researchers are decoding the language of nature to better understand how Lancaster’s...

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04/01/2026

Tackling the Impacts of Ocean Climate Change Through High-Performance Computing

Pennsylvania may be landlocked, but geography is no barrier for this Franklin & Marshall marine biochemist. By leveraging a powerful supercomputer, Peter Fields and his student researchers are tackling ocean climate change from the heart of Lancaster...

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03/24/2026

Seat at the Table: Students Work Alongside National Experts on the F&M Poll

Led by two faculty mentors, Franklin & Marshall juniors and seniors with a keen interest in political polling, civics, and voter sentiment meet weekly to discuss best practices and trends in polling, how to analyze and contextualize results, and...

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03/13/2026

Mapping the Cosmos with F&M’s Supercomputer

How do you find a needle in a galactic haystack? Fronefield Crawford is harnessing the computational strength of F&M’s High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster to pinpoint the location of rotating stars in our neighboring galaxies.

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02/16/2026

Powering Innovation: Inside F&M’s Campus Supercomputer

Imagine 1,600 computer processors combining power toward one task. This is the engine driving innovation at F&M. Called a High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, this elite shared resource accelerates discovery, empowers large-scale research, and...

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02/03/2026

Coral, Caves and Ice Cores: The Path to Hydrology for Monica Arienzo ’08

Hydrology research has taken Monica Arienzo ’08 to coral reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands, underwater caves in the Bahamas and ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland.

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01/22/2026

AI Research Bridges Environment and Economic Studies

How do you prove the economic value of clean water? Under the guidance of Professor Patrick Fleming, two students leveraged a unique combination of field research and AI to gauge Chesapeake Bay Watershed quality.

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12/16/2025

Research Club Kickstarts Students’ Science Careers

At Franklin & Marshall, a distinctive opportunity for hands-on learning gives students the chance to participate in collaborative research as early as their second week on campus. The Nanobots Research Club meets weekly and aims to help students...

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12/08/2025

A Diplomat’s Deep Dive into Marine Biology

Learning by doing is part of our DNA as Diplomats. Jaeyun An ’26 dove headfirst into this philosophy, spending a semester in the turquoise waters of Turks and Caicos researching the island’s diverse marine life. “This experience gave me the...

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11/21/2025

What is Extended Reality–and Why are F&M Students Researching It?

Learning by doing is in our DNA as Diplomats. For Sujal Shah ’27 and Kha Nguyen ’28, this meant collaborating with their computer science professor to research how extended reality can be used for safer, more effective employee training.

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11/13/2025

Trailblazing Research Examines Cigarette Label Alternatives

Three F&M students helped conduct a groundbreaking pilot study in Lancaster this summer, assisting Professor Hollie Tripp with tobacco regulatory research. It's the first F&M instance of biospecimen collection from non-campus participants.

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10/01/2025

Starstruck in the Land of the Rising Sun

A Diplomat's influence reaches everywhere — even the skies of Japan. This summer, a handful of astrophysics majors and their professor enjoyed a two-week trip to Japan that was “part pulsar science expedition, part cultural exchange related to...

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