As some of the world’s foremost scientists speak at Gustavus during the 2014 Nobel Conference, some students will also have the opportunity to share their own research in the Nobel Conference Student Research Poster Display.

Physics Professor Tom Huber organized the event and addressed the motivation for displaying student work during the Nobel Conference.

“We’ve got thousands of visitors on campus, everything from Nobel Prize winning scientists to high school students who are visiting, and we wanted to have a way of showcasing some of the research projects which the students have been involved in,” Huber said.

The posters will be displayed in the Blue Lund Forum on Oct. 7-8. Conference attendees and the campus community are encouraged to view the posters during the breaks between speakers at their leisure.

The display may include material presented at last year’s Celebration of Creative Inquiry, posters reflecting summer research projects, and the Fall Research Symposium from earlier this semester.

Chemistry Professor Steve Miller was instrumental in presenting the Fall Research Symposium earlier this year, and indicated the significance of the creation of student posters.

“In the sciences, one of the most important things that one does is to share results with other people, it’s a skill that definitely requires practice and nurturing and so we like to give students as much opportunity as possible to do that,” Miller said.

Miller also reflected the value of the posters’ effect of communicating scientific theory to the general public.

“One of the opportunities that the Nobel conference presents is to get a group of perhaps more generalist types of people directly interacting with scientists at the highest level and everybody in between, so I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to connect people interested in science and people doing science, and certainly the students presenting at the poster session have very pivotal role as mediaries between the two groups,” Miller said.

Junior Biochem, Molecular Biology, and Biology majors Griffin Reed presented his poster earlier this year during the Fall Research Symposium. Reed conducted research through the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, working with a pediatric cardiologist to examine the relation between gene mutations and cardiac channelopathies.

“It was really fun to interact with the people that I was sharing it with, and they were really interested in the research. It was exciting to talk to people who were so interested in what I had done,” Reed said of presenting his work.

Huber noted that the posters have received attention from the Nobel Conference lecturers in the past. He also encourages students to check out the posters, noting that first-years and sophomores may find inspiration for conducting their own research in the future.

“This is one of what I consider to be the capstones of a Gustavus education, to be involved in something outside of the standard classroom experience, and so these [posters] are oftentimes based on a project that they did as an independent study, summer internship, on or off campus,” Huber said.

Senior Biology Major Kate Schulze spent the summer conducting research of age-related memory impairment and the neurological changes which occur as the brain ages. Schulze displayed her poster at the Fall Research Symposium, and it will also be available to view during the Nobel Conference.

“It was great for me to bring my research back to Gustavus. Going so far away it’s cool to then come back to your home, and have people actually interested in it and check out your poster and learn about your research, to show what else is going on in the science field and to show another side of what’s going on outside of the regular classes that we’re taking,” Schulze said.

Schulze encouraged students inspired by the poster display to pursue research opportunities to seek opportunities detailed on the Gustavus website and to speak with professors on campus.

Students interested in sharing a research poster during the Nobel Conference may contact Professor Huber at huber@gustavus.edu.

-Libby Larson