Conference Program | Schedule | Picture Gallery at Picasa
The 2010 Chicago Area Undergraduate
Research Symposium was held on April 10, 2010 at the Andrew J. McGowan
Chemistry and Environmental Science Building (1110 W. Belden Avenue,
Chicago, IL 60614) on DePaul University's Lincoln Park campus. Over 200
undergraduates from several institutions presented 140 research
projects as poster presentations and 24 oral presentations in the
fields of biology, chemistry, physics, social sciences, psychology,
humanities, and engineering. These projects spanned a wide range of
subfields, from tissue engineering to organic synthesis to social
psychology . Many faculty members from the participating institutions
generously donated their time to judge these poster and oral
presentations.
Lynn Narasimhan, Ph.D, Associate Dean of the
College of Liberal Arts and Science, gave the opening address to begin
the conference. Immediately after the opening address, students
presented their research posters during Poster Session I. Following
poster session I, students, judges, and guests headed to the ballroom
in DePaul's Student Center to enjoy lunch with roundtable discussions.
The
roundtable discussions allowed the students to learn about unique
post-graduate
opportunities such as graduate fellowships and unconventional career
paths such as patent law. Following lunch with roundtables, 24 students
presented oral presentations simultaneously in six classrooms in the
Andrew J. McGowan Science Pavilion. Immediately following oral
presentations, students presented more of their research posters during
Poster Session II.
Poster Session II was followed by a thirty
minute served reception in the ballroom's pre-event area, where
students, judges, and guests were served appetizers and beverages as
they waited for the banquet dinner to be served. After the banquet
dinner, Dr. Rocky Kolb, Professor and Chair of The University of
Chicago's Astronomy and Astrophysics department, delivered a
fascinating keynote speech. The evening concluded with the presentation
of awards to the event's outstanding poster and oral presenters.
-Speakers-
This year's opening address was given by Dr. Lynn Narasimhan,
the current Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science
at DePaul University and a professor of Mathematical Sciences. Dr.
Narasimhan received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Northwestern
University in 1977 and joined the faculty at DePaul twoyears later. She has taught numerous undergraduate courses for both majors and
non-majors, and received the university's Excellence in Teaching Award
in 1992. For the past 10 years, she has been active in mathematics and
science education and is currently Director of DePaul's
Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Center which oversees programs
that support minority students and women in mathematics and science,
such as Alliance for Minority Participation program and the Clare
Boothe Luce Scholarship program, and programs for teachers funded by
the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the National Science
Foundation.
This year's keynote address was given by Dr. Rocky Kolb,
a Arthur Holly Com
pton Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy
& Astrophysics and the College and Chair of the Department of
Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, as well as a
member of the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for
Cosmological Physics. In 1983 he was the founding head of the
Theoretical Astrophysics Group and in 2004 the founding Director of the
Particle Astrophysics Center at Fermilab.The Field of Rocky's research
is the application of elementary-particle physics to the very early
Universe. In addition to over 200 scientific papers, he is the
co-author of The Early Universe, the standard textbook on particle
physics and cosmology, and the author of a book for the general public,
Blind Watchers in the Sky.
His
scientific research was recently recognized by the 2010 Dannie Heineman
Prize of the American Institute of Physics and the American
Astronomical Society (shared with Michael Turner). He received the
Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers for
outstanding, widespread, and lasting impact on the teaching of physics.
His classroom teaching at the University of Chicago was recognized by
the 1993 Quantrell Prize for teaching excellence and the 2009 teaching
award of the Graham School of General Studies. He received the 1996
Emme Award of the American Aeronautical Society for science writing.
Rocky is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a
Fellow of the American Physical Society.
