The inaugural Ivy League Undergraduate Research Symposium will take place at Penn Nov. 10 to Nov. 12, bringing together roughly 200 undergraduate students from across the eight Ivy League schools.
The creation of ILURS was largely the vision of Anuj Amin, executive director of the symposium. 鈥淥ne of the things in my Penn experience that I wasn鈥檛 able to do was connect with other majors,鈥� Amin said. He said he found the difficulty he had networking with scholars at the undergraduate level to be difficult.
After speaking with the Director of Undergraduate Research and Fellowship at Penn, Amin was inspired to create a platform that would connect the academics occurring at each of the Ivies, he said.
鈥淭here are definitely sports circuits and different, other more specific types of conferences鈥� which bring the Ivy League together, Amin said. But he was unaware of a single interdisciplinary platform that connects the schools, he added. With this in mind, 鈥渙ne thing led to another and ILURS was born,鈥� he said.
Amin outlined two main goals for the symposium: to promote undergraduate research, giving undergraduates the opportunity to present their work and speak with other researchers, and to foster networks between scholars from multiple academic backgrounds.
鈥淲hat sets (ILURS) apart (from other research conferences) is that we are not solely focused on the research aspect,鈥� said Pranay Vissa, director of internal affairs for ILURS. 鈥淩esearch is obviously the most important part of the symposium, but we are really keen on trying to build interdisciplinary relationships and networks between people,鈥� he explained.
To facilitate both its goals, the symposium will also feature keynote speeches and hold career fairs, crash courses and workshops for the attendees.
Twenty-one students from Brown will journey to Penn this November to attend the symposium. Alexander Adia 鈥�18 will be attending the conference and said that he is looking at ILURS as an opportunity to present his first original research project. 鈥淭he reason you present research, in general, is to make people think about the questions you are asking and the problem that you are investigating,鈥� Adia said. Through the conference, he hopes to learn how to improve his research presentation in order to make his work salient to other people.
Allen Green 鈥�21 will also be a conference attendee and believes ILURS will offer several opportunities for him. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of networking there,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o I鈥檓 pretty excited for that.鈥� Green also expressed that the workshops at the conference would help him prepare for higher level research.
ILURS鈥檚 efforts to promote undergraduate research will continue even after the conference. Following the symposium,鈥渨e will be working to establish a journal called the 鈥業vy League Undergraduate Journal of Research,鈥欌�� Amin said. The journal, which will be divided into academic disciplines in accordance with the symposium, will function as 鈥渁nother platform for academic discussion,鈥� he explained.
Another post-conference initiative is the establishment of the Ivy League Research Fund. 鈥淔inancial obligations should not be a hindrance to knowledge,鈥� Amin said.
Both Amin and Vissa anticipate that ILURS will become an annual event. 鈥淲e were actually blown away by the number of abstracts that were submitted,鈥� Vissa said. 鈥淲e have a lot of support on campus,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd in terms of organizational strength, we are definitely poised to make this an annual thing.鈥�
