Second annual graduate symposium pushes for interdisciplinary collaboration

Graduate students will be given the opportunity to present their research and discover potential collaborations at an upcoming conference. The Graduate Students’ Association’s (GSA) Academic Standing Committee is hosting the interdisciplinary Peer Beyond Symposium on Feb. 20 in MacEwan Hall.

This will be the second symposium of its kind organized by the GSA, aimed to encourage collaboration and professional development.

“It will encourage people from different departments to come and present their research to those who are completely unfamiliar with the project that they’re working on,” says Negar Mohammadi, GSA vice-president (academic). “It creates opportunities to start interdisciplinary collaborations and innovation.”

In 2017, the symposium, also themed around graduate students from varying fields working together, was comprised of oral presentations, a keynote speaker, poster presentations, and professional development workshops.

“We incorporated a lot of feedback from last year’s participants and this year will be even better,” says Run Ze Yang, graduate student in the Department of Neuroscience.

This year’s Peer Beyond will have a similar format but with the addition of invited postdoctoral fellows to take the role of judging the student presentations.

Elena Buliga, psychology graduate student participated in the conference in 2017 year. “As a first-year MSc student, I was eager to attend many conferences and symposiums,” she says. “This seemed like a great opportunity to share my research with others.”

It is important for graduate students to be able to convey their research to a broad audience. “I had a chance to practise my skills of convincing others that my area of research is worth exploring,” says Buliga.

Ed McCauley, vice-president (research), will be delivering the symposium’s keynote speech on the importance of collaboration amongst different faculties and the impact of grad students in the university’s goal to become a top research university.

D’Arcy Norman Taylor and Isadora Mok-Kulakova from the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning will be running a hands-on workshop on the use of advanced technology in teaching and presentations. A second workshop will be run by Isabelle Barrette-Ng, who is an award-winning instructor in the Department of Biological Sciences.

More information on the symposium and abstract submission guidelines can be found here on the GSA’s website. The deadline to submit abstracts for the symposium is Feb. 5. Abstracts can be submitted to academic.gsa@ucalgary.ca.