UWEC CERCA 2026: Full Schedule

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2:00pm CDT

Poster 015: MARS: A Platform for Mapping and Analyzing Research Software

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT

Research Software Engineering (RSE) projects are increasingly used by nearly all disciplines to further scholarly work. Yet little is known, empirically speaking, about the quantity, quality, and scope, of these projects, nor how they change and mature over time. We present MARS, a software platform for Mapping and Analyzing Research Software, that serves as a discovery and inventory system for software projects at universities and research institutions across the United States. Creating this platform allows us to answer research questions like, "Just how many RSE projects are out there?", "What do they look like?", "How can we learn from these projects to accelerate new software projects in science?". This presentation demonstrates the current state of our in-progress development of the MARS platform.

Presenters

Vinicius Araujo

Web Developer/IT Intern, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Emma Laabs

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Faculty Mentor

Samuel Schwartz

Computer Science, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT
Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330) 77 Roosevelt Ave, Eau Claire, WI 54701, USA

CERCA Posters, 2 Thursday

Department Computer Science
College CAS

2:00pm CDT

Poster 016: Computational Analysis of Climate Misinformation on X/Twitter Before the 2024 US Presidential Election

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT

Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330)

This project examines how account-level features on X/Twitter impact the spread of climate misinformation during the 2024 U.S. election week. It analyzes if attributes like follower count, verification status, and engagement activity predict the diffusion of climate misinformation. We share the results of our investigation on how misinformation moved through the platform during a surge of activity from the political movement and to recommend improvements for the platform's governance and communication strategies.

Presenters

Ari Edwards

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Faculty Mentor

Samuel Schwartz

Computer Science, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT
Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330) 77 Roosevelt Ave, Eau Claire, WI 54701, USA

CERCA Posters, 2 Thursday

Department Computer Science
College CAS

2:00pm CDT

Poster 045: Stultus:An Open Source, Independent Internet Search Engine

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT

Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330)

Being closed source and controlling over 90% of the world's search engine market, existing mainstream search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo have an overt influence on the way users interact with the open internet. Due to the size and complexity of the internet and its standards, it is difficult to build any sort of complete internet search engine. This project aims to fill that gap, making a complete, open source, and index-independent search engine for use with the modern web. Using Kubernetes, Postgresql, and custom Python code, high-performance web crawlers are deployed at scale across a fleet of 12 retired desktops repurposed to be servers and tokenized into a high-performance database which matches user queries to the closest matching site. Insights about the modern web, including the prevalence of AI-generated content and the distribution of languages are also measured using the data captured during this project.

Presenters

Jack Hagen

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Gabriel Tapia

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Aaron Fraser

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Reed Graf

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Silas Eacret

Student Administrator at Blugold Center for High Performance Computing, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Hello! I'm Silas. I enjoy breaking things, fixing the things, and then breaking more things in the process of fixing said things.

I'm currently employed part-time by the Blugold Center for High Performance Computing (https://hpc.uwec.edu) at UWEC as a Student Administrator. I help... Read More →

Yegeon Cho

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Faculty Mentor

Emily Hastings

Computer Science, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT
Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330) 77 Roosevelt Ave, Eau Claire, WI 54701, USA

CERCA Posters, 2 Thursday

Department Computer Science
College CAS

2:00pm CDT

Poster 046: Creating a Dataset of Realistic AI-Generated Phishing Emails to Better Inform Phishing Defenses

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT

Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330)

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has facilitated the creation of targeted, mass-produced, and highly effective phishing messages with unprecedented ease. Unlike previous methods, attackers no longer face the dilemma of choosing between investing time in crafting personalized spear phishing messages or opting for less effective, but broadly distributed, general phishing campaigns. Despite continuous warnings from security researchers and academics spanning over a year, there remains a notable scarcity of AI-generated phishing messages available for comprehensive study and analysis. The establishment of a comprehensive corpus of AI-generated phishing messages would provide researchers with the data to devise effective strategies for detecting and thwarting these sophisticated techniques. To address this gap, we propose leveraging the computational capabilities of UWEC’s Blugold Center for High Performance Computing with local Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate a diverse and extensive collection ofmalicious phishing messages for analysis and new techniques to better detect AI generated phishing attacks.

Presenters

Jack Hagen

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Jacob Stoltenburg

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Faculty Mentor

Mounika Vanamala

Computer Science, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT
Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330) 77 Roosevelt Ave, Eau Claire, WI 54701, USA

CERCA Posters, 2 Thursday

Department Computer Science
College CAS

2:00pm CDT

Poster 074: Tracking the Real Time Movements of the Food Delivery KiwiBots using a Network of Low-Powered, WiFi-Enabled Devices

Thursday April 30, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm CDT

Davies Center: Ojibwe Ballroom (330)

KiwiBots are food delivery robots which traverse the campus of UW-Eau Claire. Each robot gives off a unique WiFi signal which can be detected by WiFi chips. A network of strategically placed, low-powered embedded computers (ESP32) capture the signals of KiwiBots within WiFi range and transmit the data to a central server for triangulation. Using average speed and overlapping detection ranges, this project aims to track the real time movements of the KiwiBots across the UW-Eau Claire campus. Potential applications of this type of system can be used to track the movement of Bluetooth or WiFi enabled devices used by passersby (Bluetooth headphones and smartphones, for instance) for malicious purposes. By creating a realistic system which can effectively track the real-time movements of personal devices, we aim to advocate for strong legal and technical countermeasures against systems of this kind.

Presenters

CERCA Posters, 2 Thursday

Department Computer Science
College CAS

UWEC CERCA 2026

2:00pm CDT

Vinicius Araujo

Emma Laabs

Samuel Schwartz

2:00pm CDT

Ari Edwards

Samuel Schwartz

2:00pm CDT

Jack Hagen

Gabriel Tapia

Aaron Fraser

Reed Graf

Silas Eacret

Yegeon Cho

Emily Hastings

2:00pm CDT

Jack Hagen

Jacob Stoltenburg

Mounika Vanamala

2:00pm CDT

Jack Hagen

Aiden Lee

Silas Eacret

Mounika Vanamala

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