Events

2024 URSI Symposium

Sep. 25, 2024, 3:00 p.m.–6:30 p.m.
Location:

Villard Room, Main Building

Every summer, Vassar’s Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI) engages students in the process of scientific discovery through an intensive ten-week collaborative research program with faculty. This year, more than 100 Vassar students and faculty participated in URSI, and in so doing created a community of scientific scholars. The summer’s results will be presented at the 38th Annual URSI Symposium in a series of student talks and posters. Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of our talented students and faculty.

3:00 p.m.: Introductory Remarks

3:15 p.m.: Students’ Oral Presentations on Summer Research

Feedback Driven Magnetic Field Evolution in MW-type Simulated Circumgalactic Medium

Param Gogia ’27 and Sam Shelly ’25 (mentor: Professor Ed Buie II, Physics and Astronomy)

B. theta has a sweet tooth: Analyzing sugar uptake

Kalina Rashkov ’25 and Sean Fisher ’25 (mentor: Professor Rebecca Pollet, Chemistry)

Insect Biodiversity on the Vassar Preserve

Carter Zelenitz ’26, Fi McKenzie ’25, Jacqueline Corsilia ’25 and Hannah Ford ’27 (mentor Professor Timothy Lampasona, Biology)

4:00 p.m.: Keynote Address

A portrait of Professor Katharine Freeman, a person with short black hair and a gray shirt.
Keynote speaker Professor Katherine Freeman

Asteroids and us: how stuff from space impacts life on Earth

Katherine H. Freeman, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences and Chemistry at Penn State University, develops and applies novel analyses to molecules from ancient life and past environments on Earth. Recently, she joined scientists supporting NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to Asteroid Bennu, which successfully delivered rock and dust samples from the asteroid to Earth last fall. These samples provide clues to sources of carbon compounds and the nature of prebiotic chemistry in the early solar system. Bennu has been full of surprises since the spacecraft first encountered it in 2018, and the speaker will share highlights from the mission, so far.

5:00 p.m.: Poster Session A (odd numbered posters)

5:30 p.m.: Poster Session B (even numbered posters)

6:30 p.m.: Dinner celebration for faculty and students

Campus community only, please.