Overview
The 2024 Annual Kearns Summer Research Symposium, hosted by the David T. Kearns Center, will celebrate the accomplishments of dozens of research scholars who participated in a ten-week summer research program at the University of Rochester. The annual symposium gives scholars the opportunity to showcase their research and prepare for professional conference presentations. The research students come from both the University of Rochester as well as other institutions across the country and are in programs that include the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, and REU’s in Imaging in Medicine and Biology, Nanophotonics, Quantum Photonics and Vision/Biomedical Optics, Chemistry Research for Medicine and Energy, and Physics and Astronomy.
Summer Research Symposium
The Annual Kearns Summer Research Symposium is usually held at the end of July each year, but this year will be held on August 2, 2024 in Feldman Ballroom.
The day will be broken up into two sessions, a morning session and an afternoon session. Due to ongoing presentations throughout the day, please be mindful of the schedule when entering rooms during presentations. On the day of, all students should be dressed professionally and should stay to support one another until the program ends.
Schedule
The conference style symposium is divided into several sections:
Panel Discussions
There will be two panel discussions during the event, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Participants will be nominated to present on the panel in place of an oral presentation. Each panel will be made up of scholars from each program. The panel discussions will be moderated and held in Feldman Ballroom and will give students the opportunity to discuss their research with a larger audience. After the panel discussions are over, each scholar will receive immediate feedback from the moderator and questions from the audience.
Questions to guide the panel discussions are a clear articulation of:
- What you did
- Why you did it
- The contributions to your field and the larger field of human knowledge
Oral Presentations
Oral presentations will happen in breakout rooms following the panel discussions. Students will deliver five-minute oral presentations regarding their summer research project. There will be time for a brief Q&A session following each section of presentations.
Questions to guide the oral presentation are a clear articulation of:
- What you did
- How you did it
- Why you did it
- The contributions to your field and the larger field of human knowledge
Students should again review guidelines in blackboard before creating their PowerPoint for their oral presentation. Students will work with their research advisor(s) on their PowerPoint.
Poster Session
Students will have the opportunity to present their research during two poster sessions as well. The posters will be displayed in Feldman Ballroom. Students will produce a poster that combines text and graphics to present their project in a way that is visually interesting and accessible and follows Kearns template guidelines which are posted on blackboard. During the poster session, students will provide oral overviews of the poster and address questions from individual audience members.
The purpose of a poster is to make people see the value of your research project. To do this, you will need to determine what you want your take-home message to be. Once you have an idea about what that take-home message is, you will need to support it by adding some details about:
- What you did
- How you did it
- Why you did it
- The contributions to your field and the larger field of human knowledge
Students should review the poster example in blackboard before creating their poster. Students will work with their research advisor(s) to create this poster.
Submission Deadlines
Students will work with their faculty to create the final presentation and poster. Final submissions will be made electronically to the Kearns Center. Posters are due before Monday, July 22, 2024.