Hosting a Physical Sciences Research Symposium
Attendees explore posters at the SPS Research Symposium for the Physical Sciences at the University of Washington.
Photo by Pine Dysart-Bricken.
The University of Washington (UW) is known for research, and many members of our chapter contribute to this legacy. Each spring students at the three UW campuses are invited to showcase their research during an undergraduate research symposium. The symposium is usually crowded and noisy in the best way, indicating the sharing of knowledge, but it can be difficult to find the physics poster presentations scattered throughout campus.
This year our SPS chapter hosted a physics-specific symposium, a smaller event held a few weeks before the campus-wide symposium, to give undergraduates the opportunity to practice their presentations and to bring the department closer together.
The Research Symposium for the Physical Sciences took place on a beautiful sunny day in late April. Eight oral presentations, seven poster presentations, and four lightning talks made for four hours of awesome science! Both the oral and poster presentation sessions were well attended, with a consistent trickle of people coming and going.
The weeks of planning we put into this event felt small compared to its significant impact. Students shared their work with an enthusiastic audience, presenters received valuable feedback before the campus-wide symposium, all participants made new connections, and the UW physics department community grew stronger as a result.
