Research Poster Competition

This event is a great showcase for students to create a poster, display their work, experience what a peer review process is all about, and win prizes! Employers love to see students who have honed their communication and critical thinking skills through poster preparation and presentation.

We encourage all students who have done or are currently doing a research project (e.g., summer research project, honours thesis, directed studies course, research project for a class, etc.) to participate in our Research Poster Competition. The research need not be completed yet; you can get valuable early feedback if you present research that is at the proposal stage!

Poster topics can be from any technical computing field, or could be related to computing education or outreach (e.g., assessment of efforts to engage women in computing).

Benefits of participation include:

• Experiencing the research world — for many undergraduates this is a first!
• Sharing research results and exchange ideas with other students, judges, and conference attendees
• Making deeper connections with academic and industry luminaries
• Getting valuable feedback from your peers
• Perfecting your communication skills
• Receiving prizes and gaining recognition

Poster Submission

If you plan to present a poster, simply provide a title as part of the registration process BEFORE APRIL 25, 2014. Poster titles submitted after that date are also welcome as long as space permits.

Poster Preparation

If you have a poster already, bring that along. If you are preparing your poster from scratch, here are some design and print tips and a few samples you can refer to for guidance.

An easel, mounted with matte board, will be available for you to display your poster. You can see what this looks like below:

You can either rest the poster on the easel or pin it to the board. We recommend that your poster dimensions are no more than 36" by 48". An alternative to a laminated poster is simply to prepare up to nine powerpoint slides and print these out; you can then pin these to the board provided.

Poster Judging

A panel of invited speakers will serve as judges and will view the posters. Participants will be given an opportunity to informally describe their research and get feedback on their work. Posters will be judged according to four criteria:

• Visual presentation: Is the visual presentation of the research neat, attractive and informative? Is it easy to read from 3 feet away? Can someone get a good overview of the project by looking at the display for 3 minutes (without listening to the presentation)?
• Oral presentation: Did the student deliver coherent and informative material within a short period of time? Did the student speak clearly? Was the student's discussion well organized? Did the student respond well to questions?
• Research methodology: Did the student show some originality in the approach (as opposed to following a step-by-step "cook book" approach)? Did the approach lead to a useful result, or to a new insight or tool, or if this is a work in progress does it appear likely to lead to a useful result, insight or tool? Does the methodology include some useful criteria for evaluating the research results (e.g. measured improvements in performance)?
• Significance of research: Is this an important problem? Does the solution or the approach itself make an important contribution?