The UBC Undergraduate Research Opportunities Club (URO) is offering grants for undergrads to present their research at a conference at Harvard University.
The National Collegiate Research Conference (NCRC) is an annual conference held at Harvard by undergrads, for undergrads. Students who win the URO’s grant will have all travel, registration and accommodation costs covered.
URO VP of National and International Collaborations Kevin Ng predicts that about six to 10 students will be able to win grants this year.
“It’s an interdisciplinary conference. We would hope that we’d get UBC students from across lots of different fields to go and to represent the very high level of research that UBC has to offer,” said Ng.
The interdisciplinary nature of the conference means there will be displays from the sciences as well as the social sciences and the humanities. According to URO Co-President Jacqueline Siu, students who are interested in research will learn a lot by presenting at the conference.
“It’s a very good chance to get a feel of how research at an international level is available and [how] it works,” she said.
In particular, Siu notes how presenters will learn how to present their ideas to people from other disciplinary areas.
“I think a big part would just be learning how to communicate your research to people not in your field,” she said. “Say you are a microbiologist: we expect you to be able to communicate why your research is important and why it’s exciting to someone ... in political science.”
Additionally the NCRC can give undergraduate researchers a chance to interact, socialize and network with researchers in the same field of study from all around the world.
“You’ll meet people who are in different fields,” said Ng. “But you’ll also meet people probably working on very similar problems and you'll get to share how your approaches are different, how they’re similar and how your results may differ.”
In order to win the grant, students must first apply for the conference through the NCRC’s website. After that, they have to apply for the travel grant to which they essentially explain what their research is about and why they want to go to the conference.
The deadline for applying for the grant is Monday, November 1. Applicants must be members of the URO in order to apply.