For the past three years, Georgetown University students have invited their peers to participate in the only student-run undergraduate scientific research conference in the Washington, D.C. area.
Tonight marks the conference’s fourth year, at which students from Georgetown and George Washington University will present scientific research to peers and judges.
Initiated in 2003, the Conference’s founders Dominick Bufalino (NHS ‘05) and Erin Conroy (NHS ‘05) thought it was important for undergraduates to showcase research, conference coordinator Natasha Kasid (NHS ‘06) said.
During the two-day long conference, students will present posters representing their current research and give an oral presentation of their work, Kasid said.
The research will include both clinical and basic research. The topics covered are international health, chemistry, human science, psychology, nursing and biology, Kasid said.
The Undergraduate Student Research Conference Committee, a Georgetown University student group, planned the conference, aided by professor and Charles Evans, chair of the Department of Human Sciences in the School of Nursing and Health Studies.
Students have an opportunity for their own peer review in this conference, SHS Dean Bette Keltner said.
“It is not a single person who decides which is better; it is a community of scholars,” she said.
Annette Flanagin, managing deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association is the conference’s key speaker. She will speak on the students’ next step in presenting their work to the public, she said.
“You need to get your research to a larger community,” Flanagin said. “If you’re lucky, because acceptance rates are very low, it gets published in a journal,” she said.
Two prizes for the poster presentations and one for the oral presentations will be awarded to students on Friday. Four NHS faculty members will judge the posters on originality, thoroughness of research, scientific accuracy, effective visual display and significance of the findings, Kasid said.
Student oral presentations will be judged by students in the audience, based on the above criteria.
