About Us
Our Story
OCURA was born from a firsthand observation: Tigers (Oxy students) are conducting extraordinary research across every discipline, but there was no student-led space to connect, support, and celebrate that work during the school year.
Founded by Val Nguyen (Class of 2028), OCURA becomes a group of 9 students who believed that research is way of thinking, asking better questions, and finding answers that matter.
Our mission is to make undergraduate research more visible, more accessible, and more celebrated at Oxy. We host workshops, build community between student researchers across departments, and in 2026 we launched Oxy’s first student-led OCURA Conference for Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research.
We’re student-run from top to bottom. We’re proudly partnered with the Library, the National Fellowships Office, academic departments, and the Undergraduate Research Center (URC, advised by Prof. Igor Logvinenko).
Everything we do comes from students who care about what research can do, for students, by students.
Executive Board 25-26
Val Nguyen ’28
President / Founder
Executive Committee
Grace English ’28
Secretary, Founding Member
Executive Committee
Ava Zagoria ’28
Chief of Finance, Founding Member
Executive Committee
Riley Cochran
Director of Operations, Founding Member
Operations Committee
Rose Ngalamulume ’28
Director of Outreach, Founding Member
Outreach Committee
Jade Crichlow ’27
Co-Director of Programming, Founding Member
Programming Committee
Elise Kim ’28
Co-Director of Programming, Founding Member
Programming Committee
Vivian Pei ’29
Operations Associate, Founding Member
Operations Committee
Felicia Faellman ’28
Outreach Associate, Founding Member
Outreach Committee
Committee Descriptions
Programming Committee
Plans and executes all OCURA events, including the RDS workshop series and the annual conference. Manages event logistics, speaker coordination, and scheduling.
Outreach Committee
Manages external communications, campus partnerships, and recruitment. Coordinates with peer organizations, academic departments, and the URC.
Handles internal operations including meeting logistics,
document management, membership tracking, and organizational processes
Maintains the OCURA website, manages the research database, oversees social media presence, and supports event technology needs.