The annual USSU Symposium took place on February 26, where USask undergraduate students got to share a wide variety of projects with their peers. 

Annually, the USSU hosts the Undergraduate Symposium showcasing research, scholarly, and artistic works done by undergraduate students at USask. Students are encouraged to submit research posters, sculptures, community-engaged learning experiences, First-Year Research Experience projects, Honours theses, and Dean’s Projects.

All research submitted must have been conducted within the past year. This year’s Symposium took place on February 26 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Place Riel North Concourse. 

Over 30 projects were presented at the Symposium this year. The Sheaf visited and learned more about some of these amazing projects. Here’s a brief snapshot of a few of them!

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Meerah is a second-year Edwards School of Business student majoring in marketing. Her series of paintings, titled Complexities, represents her experience with social anxiety and self-image.

“A big thing in famous portraits [is that] the subject is usually looking at the viewer, but I wanted to subvert that expectation with my pieces. I had a very hard time making eye contact with people in social settings, and it was quite debilitating,” she explains.

The red paintings of the eyes are actively looking away to help portray the disconnect Meerah felt when trying to converse with someone. The red was used to depict strong emotions of discomfort and unease. In contrast, the blue painting of the eye looking directly at the viewer, along with the blue monochromatic color scheme, is meant to be more calming. 

Meerah spent eight hours working on the larger painting and five hours individually on the smaller paintings. She has enjoyed painting from a young age and painted this series for her solo exhibition at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery. 

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Shruti is a third-year computer science student. Her research was in the field of cryobiology, studying the effects of low temperatures on living organisms. Shruti designed a three-dimensional lattice-based model focused on ice propagation, observing how ice interacts with cells in specific tissues.

She incorporated a mathematical value obtained from integration and different tau values to make the model more reactive. Additionally, Shruti’s research tried to define different connection breakage definitions in a specific tissue for different cells. The main programming language used was C++, and the automation of the scripts was done in Bash. 

Shruti explains her findings from her research, “We figured out that a specific connection breakage range was preferred over the other, and we ideally wanted something higher than connection breakage, 1% to help us actually replicate the real-life ice propagation model.” 

She conducted this research for a biology class and recommends that people take research classes because they are fun and allow you to apply the knowledge learned. Shruti says, “Presenting here at the symposium was super fun! [I have] gotten to meet lots of people which has been very exciting!” 

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Jenny and Cameron both major in food industry management. Their project focused on mitigating online food misinformation through a social media initiative. “It’s called Food Myth Friday, which is essentially where we post graphics every week breaking down common food myths, one being aspartame,” Cameron says. 

Their data analysis found that aspartame-related posts had the most likes, comments, and shares, leading them to conduct a case study on the topic. Jenny says, “I [interviewed] most of our followers and they definitely had a stereotype [of] aspartame. They thought it was bad and cancerous. They’ve heard misinformation through TikTok and Instagram. After reading our posts, they felt more comfortable consuming Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke, [and other] products with aspartame.”

Cameron encourages students confused and overwhelmed with the food information available on social media to employ critical thinking skills and ask “Is this rational?” as “Canada has one of the safest food supply chains in the world.” 

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Dominic is a fifth-year regional urban planning student. His research was on the impacts of active transportation on health in industrial districts. Dominic conducted a site analysis and literature review on industrial sites in Edmonton.

Dominic explains the site analysis: “I measured how wide the sidewalks, the active transportation paths, and bike lanes were. I also did some mapmaking to see how connected they are to different kinds of infrastructures, and how disconnected they are. At what point [does] that path just suddenly end, leaving people to walk on the side of the street, or what streets just don’t have any infrastructure at all, posing a challenge for non-automobile commuters?” 

His literature review linked the site analysis results with the social determinants of health to explore the impacts of active transportation on health. His findings were that active transportation allows people to have healthier choices, such as walking before work or during lunch breaks. He stresses this importance by highlighting how many Canadian adults do not meet the recommended one hour of physical activity per day. 

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Warsha is a fourth-year history major. Her project was on the rise of coffee in the Islamic world, the controversies associated with it, and how it became embedded in the social fabric of the world.

Her project was inspired by a history seminar class where they analyzed a scholar who looked at drug culture and histories in Iran and the Eastern world. “It was really interesting because he had one or two sentences that mentioned coffee and I was really intrigued,” she says. 

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The symposium is not only a time for other students to view the amazing work done by USask students, but also the presenters are evaluated by two to three judges for awards. The awards ceremony for the USSU symposium happened on March 4. 

Congratulations to all the presenters and winners!