Behind the Scenes of my MassURC Presentation

Content

As an undergraduate researcher, presenting at the Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference (MassURC) is a great way to interact with other researchers in my field and to get more experience with showcasing my work. My lab partner, Sage Seymour, and I had a lot of preparation to do for the conference, so here’s how we went about it!

The Abstract 

When submitting your application for the conference, you have to include a 250 word abstract that summarizes your presentation and provides an overview of your research. We work in the Peyton lab at UMass Amherst, so Sage and I came up with a draft and showed it to our Principal Investigator (PI), Dr. Shelly Peyton, who gave us feedback and we reworked it accordingly. We were looking at explaining our methodology, the motivation for our research, and what we’re currently working on, so Dr. Peyton’s advice was crucial in ensuring our abstract reflected that. 

The Video Submission

All participants are divided into panels based on the topic of their presentation. Our research was focused on developing decellularized plant-based biomaterials, so we were a part of the “Exploring Biomaterials & Neuroprotection through Protein Crystallization & Image Processing” group that had 5 presenters in total (including us). 

As such, we had to submit an 8-10 minute video presentation prior to the conference so our panelists could view it and we could watch theirs as well. For this part, we made a Google slides deck that broke down different parts of our research. We went into the background and motivation of our research, the methodologies we used, our results so far and what we’re planning to do in the future. We recorded our presentation on Zoom and submitted it on the conference website. It took us a few tries to get it right and to stay under time, but after working out all those kinks, It was a pretty straightforward process!

Then, we went and watched the four other presentations.

"All of our fellow researchers did such a great job, we were so impressed with their work and were really excited to discuss with them and draw inspiration from their materials. We also noted down questions we wanted to ask them for the day of the conference."

- Mahidhar Sai Lakkavaram

Conference Day 

Our presentation was at 9:15 a.m. on April 28, 2023, and was about 45 minutes. While a little anxious, we were still really excited to culminate this process! Sage and I made a one-slide presentation that highlighted the main points of our research and timed ourselves for a four minute talk. 

The chair for our session was Joseph A. Bruseo, a professor of biology at Holyoke Community College. Each group presented a summary of their research, after which we all discussed different aspects of our findings and asked each other questions on what our work could look like in the future.

Overall, it was a really unique experience! I never presented this research before, let alone in a virtual format. Talking to other researchers in the same field and drawing similarities between our work was a nice way to steer our research and think critically about how we can shape it moving forward. I had a fun time talking to other participants and engaging in the other aspects of the conference (like watching the Keynote Address and attending the reception), so I’m pretty sure I’ll be a part of it next year as well!

"The professional feel but also casual presentation of research in Mass URC made it exciting to present my senior thesis at. It’s really inspiring to hear about the crazy and fascinating work of my peers and how everyone’s unique interests come out in research projects like these!”

- Sage Seymour