Clarkson undergraduates present research, win GE-funded awards

POTSDAM — What do turtle mortality, wind turbine analysis and prosthetic limbs have in common?

For starters, all were topics of research projects at Clarkson University’s 14th annual Summer Symposium on Undergraduate Research Experience. The symposium, which saw a total of 40 posters and 60 oral presentations, was held last week in Clarkson’s Bertrand H. Snell Hall as a way to recognize and encourage student participation in scholarly projects.

“For the students who work over the summer, it provides a nice way for them to wrap up their work,” said Gregory C. Slack, director of research and technology transfer at Clarkson. “It gives them experience presenting their work in a conference environment.”

No construction paper or hand drawings in sight, each poster featured professionally printed materials and computer-generated diagrams. Many of the presentations also featured esoteric or unpronounceable titles — “A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm with Implicit Filtering for Mixed-Integer Optimization Problems” and “Characterization of Rad51 Expression in Cardiomyocytes,” for example.

While most of the undergraduates at Thursday’s symposium were Clarkson students in the college’s honors program or other summer research programs, several were visiting from other universities. According to Mr. Slack, the students could base their presentations upon any scholarly work completed during a class, research project or internship experience at Clarkson.

In addition to academic experience, the students had a chance to win prizes funded by a $1,000 first-time donation from General Electric. Clarkson faculty and several GE employees, all Clarkson alumni, chose the winners from 13 categories of oral presentations and five categories of posters.

“The presentations that are given by the students are good. I’ve been to national presentations, and they are the same quality,” Mr. Slack said. “It really makes them feel that they’ve gained a sense of accomplishment.”