March 5, 2012
Students presenting research related to Kansas, nation
Submitted by Communications and Marketing
On Thursday, March 8, Kansas State University undergraduate and graduate students across academic disciplines will present their scholarly research at the 17th annual K-State Research Forum.
The free event is open to the public and is an opportunity for the university's undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their research to the campus community. The forum is sponsored by the university's Graduate Student Council and the Graduate School.
Throughout the day 11 undergraduate and 82 graduate students will present their research relating to Kansas and the nation. Topics include healthcare, bioscience, military relations and military families, roads and transportation, energy, technology, water, animal health, defense, tax policy and tourism, among others.
All presentations take place in the K-State Student Union. Poster presentations will be on display from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the KS Ballroom. Graduate students' oral presentations begin at 9 a.m. Thursday. Interdisciplinary research will be presented in the Big 12 Room and agricultural research will be presented in the Flint Hills Room. Undergraduate students' oral presentations begin at 9:30 a.m. in the Sunflower Room.
"The K-State Research Forum provides our students an excellent opportunity to share their research with their colleagues, K-State faculty and administrators and the public," said Carol Shanklin, dean of the Graduate School. "This experience challenges the students to present their research in a public setting with a diverse audience and to explain their projects and the benefits of their research to someone other than their mentor and research team. The research forum showcases our students' contributions to K-State's research mission."
The research forum will also include presentations from the graduate students who attended the Capitol Graduate Research Summit in February in Topeka. The students will present their Kansas-related research at 1 p.m. in the KS Ballroom.
University faculty judges will select the top presenters. One undergraduate from the oral presentation and one undergraduate from the poster presentation will be chosen as winners. Three graduate students will be selected from each discipline's oral presentation and poster session. One winner will be selected from each interdisciplinary session.
The interdisciplinary award is sponsored by the university's chapter of Sigma XI, a scientific research society. The other awards are supported from the Academic Excellence Funds provided by the provost and president's offices, the Graduate Student Council and the Graduate School.
Honors will be given to the students at an awards ceremony, which begins at 4 p.m. in the Big XII Room. The ceremony will include a keynote address by Stephen Higgs, associate vice president for research, director of the Biosecurity Research Institute and Virginia and Perry Peine biosecurity chair in the department of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology.
For more information about the K-State Research Forum and a PDF with the abstracts of the topics being presented, go to http://www.k-state.edu/grad/studentcouncil/researchforums.html.