Join Us for University Research Day 2025!
Join The Catholic University of America’s students, faculty and staff on Wednesday, April 2 when we celebrate their research achievements at University Research Day (URD) 2025!
URD is our annual opportunity to celebrate our University community’s long tradition of research and to explore the extraordinary array of research being conducted by our students, faculty, and staff.
The hallmarks of Catholic University research are innovation, scholarship, and exploration and you will see this combination of scholarship and creativity on display at URD 2025. Research Day will have oral and poster sessions, musical performances, and a film festival to guarantee an engaging demonstration of talent and hard work by our campus community. Our day will begin with an address by Provost Aaron Dominguez and a soon-to-be-revealed keynote presentation. The event will culminate with a live awards ceremony during which Provost Dominguez will announce the most engaging and successful presentations and demonstrations from URD 2025.
Join us in celebrating the 10th anniversary of URD as we mark this milestone year!
We will be sharing more details with you about URD 2025 in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, please mark your calendars for Wednesday, April 2, begin writing your abstracts, and plan to join us to celebrate research at Catholic University!
Gregory Miller and Reiko Asano
URD 2025 Co-chairs
Latest News: Catholic University Achieves Top-Tier R1 Status
The designation is America's gold standard for university research. Only five percent of American colleges and universities are designated with R1 status.
Research Day 2025 Call for Abstracts
Submissions Are Now Closed!
Thank you to all of our University Research Day 2025 Participants!
Submissions are now closed, but we are delighted to have received abstracts from every School on campus and from many different disciplines. The URD Planning Committee is reviewing abstracts and you will receive notification of acceptance for URD in the first week of March.
Working on an abstract for another academic opportunity? Our informative how-to guide for writing an abstract is available to assist you.
Questions? Reach out to us at researchday@cua.edu
History of Catholic University Research Day
The first University Research Day (URD) was held in 2016 through the inspiration and hard work of NCSSS professor Melissa Grady, the support of the Provost, and the first University Research Day Planning Committee. Since that first year, URD has become a marquee event on campus and one of the most eagerly anticipated by students, staff, and faculty.
From this initial event, URD has grown to include a poster session that fills the Great Rooms in the Pryz, artistic presentations from the Rome School, and a film festival. The COVID-19 pandemic inspired many changes on campus including a virtual program for URD. URD 2021 was a resounding success. Families, friends, alumni, and supporters from around the globe participated. Thousands of visitors enjoyed live-streamed talks and access to nearly 140 recorded presentations plus musical performances. So successful was this change that even when it was no longer a necessity, we continue to offer a full virtual program for all to participate.
We hope you will join us and celebrate the 10th anniversary of URD! You can join this celebration by submitting abstracts for a poster or an oral presentation (due January 31!) , attend our in-person keynote and oral presentations and poster session, or participate remotely by watching poster and oral presentations available on our URD website.
We thank all URD participants and the URD Planning Committees from the past 9 Research Days and we hope to see you for this 10th anniversary event!
URD presentations from previous years can be found in the 2024 Research Day archives and in Catholic University's Digital Repository.