St. Joseph’s University, New York student Jawad Zaman ’27 recently received recognition from the Northeast Regional Honors Council (NRHC) for his research paper, “Benchmarking Neural Machine Translation Using Open-Source Transformer Models and a Comparative Study with a Focus on Medical and Legal Domains”.
Published in the Fall 2025 volume of Illuminate, the NRHC’s undergraduate journal, Zaman’s research paper was awarded Paper of the Year at the 2025 Northeast Regional Honors Council Conference, selected from thousands of student submissions across the region.
As the recipient of the St. Joseph’s University Undergraduate Research Support Grant, Zaman was able to fund his trip to the conference held in Harrisburg, Pa., from Mar. 27 through Mar. 30.
His paper explores ways to improve neural machine translation in a medical and legal context using artificial intelligence.
The NRHC’s publication, Illuminate, highlights outstanding scholarly work presented at the annual conference and provides students with a platform to share their research with a wider academic community.
Jawad Zaman ’27 presenting his research at the NRHC Conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Zaman, an international student majoring in Computer Science, Math and Business Administration on the Brooklyn Campus, explained that his motivation for this research came from wanting to create practical and meaningful improvements in how technology is used.
With sound medical and legal decisions dependent on clear communication, Zaman wanted to explore how translation tools could become more reliable in high stakes environments. The research process was rigorous, including many long coding sessions and tests of multiple models. However, he shared that seeing the final results made every hour worth it.
“Having my research published as an undergraduate feels surreal,” he said. “This is my dream, and it is only the beginning.”
Zaman attributes much of his success to the faculty mentorship and academic support he receives at St. Joseph’s. He worked closely with Michael Burke, Ph.D., associate professor of Philosophy; Elizabeth Zollinger, Ph.D., associate professor and associate chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science department; and Teaching Instructor Andrew Lane, who guided him from the writing stage to the final presentation.
“This type of one-on-one support is something you do not get everywhere, “ Zaman stated. “Having professors who genuinely care makes a real difference.”
Zaman’s trip was funded by the SJNY Undergraduate Research Support Grant.
Looking toward the future, Zaman plans to continue presenting at research conferences and is already working on new projects. He hopes to expand his work in AI applications within psychology and public communication. For students interested in starting their own research journey, his advice is straightforward.
“Be curious, be persistent and take advantage of the opportunities the University offers,” Zaman concluded.
