The spring 2007 Undergraduate Research Symposium, being billed as the “biggest and best yet,” will be held April 28 in the Athletic Complex. There will be 75 presentations — more than double the 30 presented last semester.
The symposium, from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., is free and open to the public. It showcases undergraduate research performed by students across several academic disciplines and will provide more opportunity than past symposiums for more students to briefly describe their research through posters and visual and oral presentations.
“I think several factors have contributed to the dramatic growth in the size of the symposium,” said Henry Biggs, Ph.D., associate dean in Arts & Sciences and director of the Office of Undergraduate Research.
“Aline Holtz, who joined us recently as research grant specialist, has made it a central focus of her work, and she has proven tremendous at working with different disciplines, being flexible about presentation styles and welcoming to styles of research that do not traditionally get the attention they deserve,” Biggs added.
Biggs cited the presentation of a documentary film, a senior dance thesis and the fact that this will be the first time members of all undergraduate schools will present work. More than 175 local high schools also were invited to attend.
“In some measures, the growth is not growth but more a coming together,” Biggs said. “There has always been a great deal of undergraduate research taking place, but it was scattered among many smaller symposia.
“Many of those disciplines have decided to join with us this year so that more people can be exposed to the tremendous research that is going on in their discipline,” Biggs added.
Students will be presenting a wide variety of research projects.
Jacob Levitas, a junior majoring in environmental studies in Arts & Sciences, and several other students from Arts & Sciences, architecture and business will present “Collaborating with an Amazonian Cocoa Cooperative to Plan a Sustainable Chocolate Factory in Ecuador.”
To aid Kallari, an Ecuadorian cocoa cooperative in the Amazon region, and to help save them money on design costs, eight WUSTL students formed a multidisciplinary group to develop preliminary architecture and business designs for the proposed factory.
“The business plan will follow a traditional outline, including background, marketing, production and manufacturing, finance and human resources,” Levitas said in the group’s proposal. “The architecture plan will follow an environmentally sustainable design, potentially as the first LEED-certified green building in Ecuador.”
The group hopes to stimulate the local economy and reduce Kallari’s expenses by internalizing the chocolate-production process.
Peter Coxeter, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering, will present his “High Efficiency Satellite-to-Satellite Laser Power Transfer Prototype.”
The project demonstrates the viability of high-efficiency power transfer between two satellites using a system of laser diodes and solar panels. This configuration allows nanosatellites to recharge from a host satellite while reducing the mass of both.
“A current trend in satellite development is the use of several small, low-cost nanosatellites that perform tasks similar to single complex satellites,” Coxeter said.
“However, current power-generation systems are too large for these nanosatellites,” Coxeter added. “Current techniques recharge remote satellites through magnetic induction. While this system is very effective at close range, the efficiency decays as the square of the distance increases. A laser diode power transmission system would have less mass and lack any distance restriction.”
Biggs said it’s very important for students to gain experience explaining and defending their work, a skill that will serve them regardless of what they pursue after college.
“I think I’m most excited about the cross-pollinating possibilities of this particular symposium: Students in engineering will get to see the research of students in International Area Studies; students in architecture will get to see how research is conducted in the business school,” Biggs said. “All of this helps students learn how they can reach across boundaries and disciplines and collaborate more effectively, seeing the connections that were not available previously.”
For more information, visit ur.wustl.edu.