2021 Departmental Poster Competition

General information for presenters:

Sigma Pi Sigma and GRASP are hosting the 5th Annual Department of Physics and Astronomy Poster Competition! It will be held on Friday, October 8th from 10:00 am - 1:00 pm, outside, in front of the physics building. The participation of all students involved in research are strongly encouraged. This is especially a good opportunity for anyone planning to present a poster at the Texas APS meeting (October 21st-23rd) or other conferences this year. This competition offers participants the opportunity to practice their poster presentation and receive feedback to improve their poster design before going to conferences.

The deadline for abstract submission will be 11:59pm on Friday, September 24th, 2021 and the deadline for poster submission one week later, Friday, October 1st, 2021 at 11:59 pm. Posters should be appropriate for 36"x 48" format and utilize university-approved templates along with some poster making tips available from the Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center, Graduate School. 

Contestants will participate in in person presentations. Judging of the posters will be based on a rubric, an example can be found here. Posters will be judged by multiple people and rubrics will be used to identify the top posters within each division.  

If you have already submitted an abstract and it has been accepted, you can upload your poster by following the "My contributions" link on the main agenda page, from there if you click on "view" followed by "Add Material", you should be able to upload a PDF to indico. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to send Dr. Whitbeck and Madison Howard an email. With a little under a month to work on posters and cash prizes on the line, we look forward to another great turnout this year!

Day-of information for judges and spectators: 

At the start of the poster competition, we'll have a short introduction before we kick things off.  After the introduction, we'll start with presentations. Due to the suggested moratorium of face-to-face events on campus, we’re following guidelines and this year’s competition will be held outside in front of the physics building at 10:00 AM- 1:00PM in person (weather permitting). We will limit the time that participants are required to be presenting to limit exposure. Otherwise, like any other poster session, please feel free to wander to where you think the most interesting research is.

Please note that some of our presenters have conflicts during certain times and may not be available when you come in person; if this happens, please check back in later!

Organizing Committee: Madison Howard (Sigma Pi Sigma).

Advisory Committee: Dr. Whitbeck (Sigma Pi Sigma Faculty Advisor)

**Post event addendum: The awards and certificates were announced the following week.   A summary of the awards for both graduate and undergraduate categories are shown here.