Summer Science Symposium

Each year our summer research program culminates with a day long event in which we celebrate the accomplishments of our students. 

Summer 2025

The 2025 Summer Science Symposium will be held Friday, July 25, 202. 

  • Oral Presentations 9:00am-11:30am, Shanklin 107
  • Prize Presentations and Keynote Lecture 12:00pm, Exley 150 
    • Erika Taylor, Professor of Chemistry and Director of WesMaSS
      • Disrupting Drug Discovery Dogma: Rethinking the Aminoglycosides Mechanism of Action
  • Poster Session 1:30pm-2:15pm and 2:30pm-3:15pm, Exley Lobby 
    • Students will be assigned to present during the first or second session, so all may view their peers' posters. Remarks at 2:15pm.

Resources for Students 

Symposium Deadlines

  • Monday, July 21
    • 9:00am: Poster Printing (submitted to the print shop)
    • 9:00am: Prize Entries (submitted through Moodle)
  • Fellows unable to participate in the poster session must contact Anika (adane@wesleyan.edu) by July 14 to discuss options.

Poster Printing

  • Posters paid for with Wesleyan funds must be printed by the Wesleyan Print Shop. If your poster is printed off site the cost cannot be reimbursed.
  • Students are responsible for submitting their design to the print shop, and for picking the completed poster up from the print shop.
  • The deadline to submit your poster is Monday, July 21, 2025 at 9:00am. Email your poster to printing@wesleyan.edu.

Poster Prizes

There are two prizes available to students who participate in the Poster Session. Both prizes come with a cash prize: $100 to the first prize winner, $50 to second place, and $25 to third place.

The CIS Research in the Sciences Image Prize

The image prize is awarded for the best visualization of summer student research work. The entries will be judged by a committee of faculty across disciplines. Images may include photographs, illustrations, data plots, or other scientific imaging. Entries require:

  1. an image 
  2. a short description of the image which includes how you captured or created it and its relevance to your research project

Entries to the image prize are due 9:00am Monday, July 21.

The Maureen Snow Summer Poster Prize

The posters are evaluated based on their effectiveness of communicating their work to a broad audience. Interdisciplinarity is a central theme for CIS, and the RIS summer program. The division-wide poster session at the end of the summer is an excellent example where scientists from across all fields are interacting and talking about their work. A vital skill for our research students is to be able to communicate their work to such a broad audience, from aficionados to students in the field, to individuals far from their area of work. To show appreciation for Maureen Snow's tireless work on the summer program and poster session, the selection committee will be exclusively made up of Administrative Assistants in the NSM departments.

Entries to the poster prize are due 9:00am Monday, July 21.

We thank the following groups and individuals for their financial support: Academic Affairs, College of the Environment, College of Integrative Sciences,  the Quantitative Analysis Center, the McNair program, WesMaSS, RISE Fellowships, the Gordon Career Center, individual departments, individual mentors, and alumni donors: Joshua Boger, Shonni Silverberg, the Hume, Lacrosse, Leukens, Lynch, Siegal, and Sonnenblick families.