More than 120 undergraduate students from UNC-Chapel Hill and beyond participated in the fifth annual Summer Undergraduate Pipeline Research Symposium – sharing the ideas they had pursued and their enthusiasm for the process of discovery with the Carolina community.
The Graduate School presented awards to the following undergraduate student presenters:
Poster presentations:
First place: Jasmine Scott, participating in the Carolina Summer Fellowship Program
Second place: Veronica Samojedny, participating in the Carolina Summer Fellowship Program
Third place: Hannah Wilkins, participating in the Chancellor’s Science Scholars Program
Oral presentations:
First place: Maryam Chadhry, participating in Project IMHOTEP
Second place: Traci Thompson, participating in the McNair Scholars Program
Third place: Zarin Tabassum, participating in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program
Dean Matson with the award winners at the 2019 Summer Undergraduate Pipeline Research Symposium.
Crudup participated in the Summer Undergraduate Pipeline, an initiative of The Graduate School’s Diversity and Student Success program, through the Chancellor’s Science Scholars (CSS) Program. Faculty members, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in 14 programs campus-wide, including the CSS Program, mentored undergraduate students for 10 weeks. The summer experience culminated in the symposium, “an event that is a special opportunity allowing scholars to showcase their work and engage our campus community,” said Kathy Wood, co-director of Diversity and Student Success.
In addition to the symposium, the Summer Undergraduate Pipeline held professional development seminars and networking events to encourage undergraduate participants to view graduate education as a viable career path, Wood added.
Noelle Romero, coordinator for the CSS Program and UNC-Chapel Hill doctoral alumna in genetics and molecular biology, spoke to symposium presenters at the July 24 awards ceremony. She said the early experience of participating in a UNC-Chapel Hill summer research program “literally changed my life.”
Graduate School Dean Steve Matson congratulated the presenters on their outstanding work and thanked their UNC-Chapel Hill mentors.
“Our world needs the innovative ideas of graduate students,” he added.
The Summer Undergraduate Pipeline Research Symposium was held on July 24, 2019, at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The symposium is the recruitment arm of the Graduate School’s Diversity and Student Success program.
(Photos by Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)