By Ahil Ganesh (EngSci 1T3), Co-Chair of UnERD 2012 

On August 15, undergraduates gathered to showcase their diverse summer research at the 7th annual Undergraduate Engineering Research Day (UnERD).

Engineering students across all departments enthusiastically prepared podium and poster presentations to display their hard work. This year, we saw 48 podium presenters and 50 poster presenters.

There was a great diversity in the research being presented, ranging from hydrogels for studying cancer cell fate, to advances in atmospheric telescopy, to online game development for learning teamwork skills. It was also wonderful to see students interested in presentations from not only their own research field, but others as well.

This year’s event featured a keynote address from Professor Bryan Karney (CivE), Associate Dean of Cross-Disciplinary Programs. His address emphasized that being successful in research has a lot to do with responsibility and integrity. I know that everyone took away some valuable points.

The event continues to be greatly supported by U of T Engineering; we received valuable support from Professor Susan McCahan, Vice-Dean Undergraduate, as well as Leaders of Tomorrow (LOT). Our professors played a key role in the day’s events, with 38 faculty members acting as judges for the presentations, giving appreciated feedback to the presenters. The students really enjoyed presenting to them and were certainly challenged.

UnERD provides numerous opportunities for aspiring researchers. The poster session is based on conference sessions, so the event is a very important opportunity for engineering undergraduates to present in a very similar kind of setting. Another key aspect of UnERD is presenting to your peers – and once again, we saw students actively questioning each other about their work. As Co-Chair of this year’s UnERD, I have to say it was really inspiring to see future researchers already talking about collaborations.