Students Showcase a Summer of Science Research at Poster Session
This past Thursday, Wellesley students and faculty gathered in Pendleton West for an afternoon of discussion and presentation on a summer of research across the sciences. Each year, Wellesley’s Summer Research Program allows a select group of students the opportunity to engage in high-level research in a variety of fields across the social and natural sciences.
Students in computer science explored such topics as data journalism techniques for enhancing web literacy, and the future of work as it relates to voice-user interfaces in automatic vehicles. Presentations from students studying neuroscience included the brain’s role in vocal communication as evidenced through birdsong, and the effect of gut microbiota alterations on Alzheimer’s disease progression. In the social sciences, students’ topics included childhood imaginary companions and their function, labor outcomes for Wellesley graduates during the Great Recession, and tourism as a mode of cultural and economic exchange.
Students and faculty gather in Pendleton West to present on their summer research, and to hear about their peers’ projects being done across a multitude of fields in both the social and natural sciences.
The Wellesley Summer Research Program provides an opportunity for students to engage in a variety of research work, fully funded, under the direction of College faculty. This year, students undertook projects in computer science, economics, education, engineering, environmental sciences, linguistics, mathematics, neuroscience, paleoanthropology, ecology, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, and chemistry.
Melissa Campos ’22 poses for a photo with her project advisor, professor Margaret Keane, Denise Kellen '68 Professor in the Health Sciences and professor of psychology. Campos spent the summer running psychological participant studies on a group of Wellesley students, focusing on the formation of their autobiographical memories during two separate five-year stretches of their childhoods.
Annie Gomez ’22 presents on her groups’ findings from their summer research investigating the mechanism of photo-induced segregation in lead-mixed halide perovskites through X-ray diffraction.
