May 26, 2015, by Lisa Chin
The Experience of Participating in the UNMC Research Showcase 2015
This post is contributed by Yamina Boukari, a third year PhD student from the School of Pharmacy.
My experience of participating in the UNMC Research Showcase 2015 was extremely positive. As a final year student who has never before taken part in the event that runs annually, I thought it would be a good idea to apply this time around. The first round involved submitting a press release explaining our research to the general audience. This was challenging because, as PhD students, we are used to presenting our findings to people who are within our field of interest, or at the very least from a related field. However the press release was aimed at the general public, hence the style of language and the terms used had to be adapted. The workshop “How to Write a Press Release” hosted by the Graduate School was extremely useful in helping to prepare for this, and I feel that having this knowledge will benefit me outside of the Research Showcase event as I am now more familiar with how to present scientific research to the media.
After submitting the press release we were then required to prepare a poster for the showcase. Again, I attended another useful Graduate School workshop, in which the instructor gave us valuable tips on how to design our posters. It was especially useful as the instructor had previously taken part in the event so had insight to what would be required of the participants. In addition to this a previous winner gave a short presentation with her advice to us, which again was very informative. Designing the poster was actually a very fun task. I feel that in scientific research, design and creativity is not always at the fore front of our minds so this task gave me an opportunity to do something different and be a little bit creative. The idea to use a needle with droplets coming out of it came from the fact that I am working on injectable scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. To check how understandable my poster was I sent it to family members and friends to read.
The next step was the video recording, in which I presented my poster in 2-5 minutes in front of a camera for fellow students to vote online. This experience was useful because it helped me to prepare what I would say to judges, students and staff during the Research Showcase. A lot of thanks goes to the Graduate School staff as they were very patient with all the retakes of my presentation.
The day of the Research Showcase itself was enjoyable, albeit tiring. It was interesting to see the other participants’ posters and to hear from them about their research. The questions I received from the judges and students were also thought-provoking. Overall it was a very beneficial experience and helped me to develop my ability to communicate my research to a general audience. I was also extremely pleased to find out that I was chosen to be amongst the final 6 that would present their posters to the panel of judges at the UK campus. Presenting to the UK panel was also very interesting, with the questions they asked being different from the questions I had received previously.
Al-hamdulilah I am very happy to have been announced as the winner of this year’s Research Showcase and would like to thank the Graduate School staff for all their hard work. I’d also like to congratulate all of the participants for their extremely interesting posters and presentations, and thank them for opening up my mind to new areas of research. Finally I would like to thank my husband for listening to my presentation countless number of times, my family and friends for their valuable feedback on my poster and also my supervisor Professor Nashiru Billa for all his support.
Yamina, presenting her poster titled “Repair Bones with One Prick of a Needle”.
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