Alumni and Student Researchers Wow Crowd at 2019 SciFest

With a new alumni symposium in the morning and a poster session filling three floors of the Science Center atrium in the afternoon, this year’s SciFest IX set a new standard for Brandeis Science’s annual celebration of undergraduate research.

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Photos: Heratch Ekmekjian

Since 2011, a poster session featuring the results from ongoing projects belonging to undergraduates doing science research has been the high point of summer in the Division of Science at Brandeis. This year, for the first time, we invited Brandeis alumni scientists to speak in a morning symposium entitled “A Celebration of Brandeis’ Undergraduate Science Education”, including:

• • Dr. Ruth Charney, ’72
  • Dr. Ronny Drapkin, ’90
  • Dr. Robert Rottapel ’79
  • Dr. Leslie Meltzer, ’03

Students and faculty in the audience were treated to a history of Brandeis and reflections on many of the Brandeis professors and courses that set them on their career path and whose influence persists to the present in how they approach their science, and on lessons they learned that continue to guide their work.

After lunch in the campus center, the crowd climbed up to the Shapiro Science Center for the poster session. 123 students presented 117 posters on topics from high-energy physics to biomaterials and from quantum chemistry to fruit fly behavior. As President Ron Liebowitz noted in an email to the Science community after the event:

The energy in Shapiro during the poster session was electric.  The students’ confidence and excitement over sharing their research can only give us great optimism about the future: they are “all in” when it comes to doing basic research, but also seeing how such research can be applied in the name of helping others.

Many of the posters can be found in the hallway in Gerstenzang – look for them when classes start again in a few weeks!

SciFest IX by the numbers

• 117 posters
• 123 student presenters (out of approx. 210 summer student researchers)
  • 105 Brandeis students
    • 99 presenting research done on campus
    • 6 presenting work done over the summer off-campus
  • 18 visiting students

• 45 Brandeis faculty advisors from 7 departments
  • Biochemistry (7)
  • Biology (18)
  • Chemistry (8)
  • Computer Science (1)
  • Physics (6)
  • Psychology (5)
  • Sociology (1)

• 12 different Brandeis undergraduate majors represented
  • Applied Mathematics (2 students)
  • Biochemistry (20)
  • Biological Physics (7)
  • Biology (50)
  • Chemistry (18)
  • Computer Science (10)
  • HSSP (6)
  • Mathematics (7)
  • Neuroscience (29)
  • Physics (6)
  • Psychology (7)
  • Environmental Studies, Sociology, Ecoonomics, andPeace, Conflict and Coexistence Studies (1 each)

•  competitive fellowship programs
  • Division of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), supported by Brandeis alumni and friends
  • M. R. Bauer Foundation Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows
  • Dr. Frederick W. Alt ’71 Summer Biology Research Fellowship
  • Tema Nemtzow ’79 and Professor Kraig Steffen Student Research Endowment Fellowship
  • Summer Materials Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SMURF), supported by the Brandeis Materials Research and Engineering Center.
  • Cell and Molecular Visualization REU, sponsored by NSF.
  • MRSEC REU, sponsored by NSF.
  • Undergraduate Traineeships in Computational Neuroscience, sponsored by NIH.
  • Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fund
  • Quantitative Biology Research Community (QBReC) at Brandeis, sponsored by HHMI.