Annual symposium organized by students remains important forum for undergrads to present their work
Linda Liu and Anika Sonig wanted to make sure all bases were covered when they planned this year’s Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium (RURS), the annual showcase for student research projects that’s operating under pandemic conditions for the second year in a row.
So the 2021 RURS will offer a live virtual competition alongside asynchronous entries and judging panels to ensure students working remotely across various time zones can participate. There’s even an in-person component of the yearly awards ceremony for students on campus.
“Our awards ceremony is still virtual this year, but we also do have a hybrid component where students who won awards can pick them up and get some food in the Grand Hall at the RMC,” said Sonig, a Sid Richardson College sophomore majoring in cognitive sciences. “So we're excited for that.”
Sonig will also be among those students presenting at this year’s RURS, held April 21 on the Symposium platform by ForagerOne. Presentations begin at 9:45 a.m. RURS concludes with its awards ceremony at 6:30 p.m. Access to the event will be available on the RURS website.
RURS is open to all undergraduates in the schools of Engineering, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, making each year a mix of posters and eight-minute oral presentations. This year, 175 students across all four schools will compete. It’s a healthy number of entries, which testifies to the importance of the showcase at Rice.
“Presenting your research at a symposium like this is good not just for your resume, but for the experience itself and having to talk about your research to people outside your major,” said Liu, a Jones College senior majoring in bioengineering. “So it's a pretty good sign that people are still contributing their time to this,”
Undergraduates will present their research live in designated virtual meeting rooms, interact with judges and attendees, and have their research presentation materials viewable by the Rice community. Students unable to attend live will share their presentation materials and recorded presentation video, then interact with judges and attendees through the comments section on their personal presentation pages.
Kirsten Ostherr, director of the Medical Humanities Program and chair of the Department of English, will give the keynote speech at this year’s award ceremony. Ostherr will discuss humanities-based responses to the pandemic and the importance of research that brings together important insights and methods from diverse fields, especially in times of crisis.
“We were looking into which professors on campus would give a good talk about the importance of research, especially with the whole pandemic going on, and we wanted to bring in someone who bridges all of that together,” Liu said of asking Ostherr to speak.
This is especially fitting for 2021, as RURS has seen a shift toward an equal balance of STEM and non-STEM research presentations, Sonig said.
“We’re actually quite excited about this year because there was definitely more non-STEM representation in comparison to last year, especially the social sciences,” Sonig said.
Last year, Sonig and her RURS co-chair Alison Drileck were in the middle of planning the spring research showcase when the emerging COVID-19 pandemic forced them to pivot. Within weeks, they’d moved the entire event online, where it included an Oscars-themed awards ceremony and the virtual bestowing of the first-ever Jenessa Shapiro Award.
“I'm glad Linda and I got almost a year to prepare for this event,” Sonig said. “So we were able to choose a better platform and really know how to navigate the website.”
It’s also given her more time to focus on her own upcoming presentation. Although this is the second RURS she’s helped coordinate, it’s the first time she’s presented. And in keeping with the work Rice students bring to RURS each year, it’s serious business.
“My topic is sudden unexpected death in epilepsy,” Sonig said. “It's a very common disease but no one really knows too much about the underlying mechanisms, so we're trying to look at the gene expression changes which might contribute to that.”
As researchers themselves, she and Liu were excited to be able to provide a platform for their fellow students to showcase their hard work.
“At the end of the day, if every student is happy and proud about what they presented and the feedback that they received from judges — and if the judges had a great experience interacting with students and sharing feedback — that’s success,” Sonig said.
They also hope students make the most of this year’s hybrid format, which also allows friends and family to participate, in effect providing a much larger audience than Tudor Fieldhouse can typically hold.
“I've had a couple people email me asking whether guests like family members are allowed to attend, and I'm like, ‘Definitely! Just share the link with them,’” Liu said. “That's something that the normal in-person symposiums aren't able to do, especially with families that aren't in Houston, so that's a really nice bonus of having it online this year.”
Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium, April 21, 9:45-7:30, free and open to the public. https://ouri.rice.edu/rurs