At York University’s Faculty of Science’s annual Science Summer 2024 Undergraduate Research Conference, students competed and received awards in recognition of oral and poster presentations on summer projects that covered topics like dark matter, mathematical disease modelling, antibiotic resistance and beyond.
More than 40 students conducting summer research in York’s Faculties of Science, Environmental & Urban Change, and Liberal Arts & Professional Studies attended the conference.
Participants – including two Queen's University students working with York U professors – had received funding earlier in the year for their summer research positions from the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada Undergraduate Summer Research Awards, the Earle Nestmann Undergraduate Research Awards or the York Science Scholars Awards.
The projects culminated at the conference, where each student gave either a poster or oral presentation that was judged by faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.
The conference – and the work leading up to it – are meant to give students hands-on opportunities to engage in research, noted Rui Wang, dean of the Faculty of Science, at the event. He stressed other benefits, too. “Sharing your ideas and findings with fellow researchers, and building connections that lead to fruitful friendships and collaborations, are an important part of being a scientist. Enjoy these moments and use them to learn about yourself and grow as a researcher.”
The students who received awards for their oral presentations were:
- Harry Parmar, a health sciences student at Queen’s University, won first place for the project “Examining Functional Properties of Frontal Eye Field in the Macaque Monkey,” supervised by Jeffrey Schall, a biology professor in the Faculty of Science.
- Vesta Tajik, an environmental biology student in York’s Faculty of Science, won second place for the project “Documenting the impacts of an inter-basin river diversion on Lake Nipigon (Ontario, Canada),” supervised by Joshua Thienpont, a professor in the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change.
- Alrishia Agard, a biomedical science student in York’s Faculty of Science, won third place for the project “Assessing the impact of road de-icers on the osmoregulatory physiology of Chironomus riparius larvae,” supervised by Andrew Donini, biology professor in the Faculty of Science.
The students who received awards for their poster presentations were:
- Yash Shrestha, a health sciences student at Queen’s University, won first place for the project “Probing Late-LTP following selective inhibition of TrkC-PTPσ complex in a mouse model,” supervised by Steven Connor, a biology professor in the Faculty of Science.
- Michael Petosa, a biomedical science student in York’s Faculty of Science, won second place for the project “A New Route to Pyridine-Substituted Piperidines,” supervised by Arturo Orellana, a chemistry professor in the Faculty of Science.
- Shahen Alexanian, a computer science and mathematics student in York’s Lassonde School of Engineering, won third place for the project “Evaluating the Introduction of a Variational Autoencoder into a Multi-omics Workflow,” supervised by Xin Gao and Hannah Jankowsi, mathematics and statistics professors in the Faculty of Science.
Read more about the students and their projects in the conference program booklet.