The Best and Brightest Shine at the Student Poster Competition

This year’s Student Poster Competition featured a record number of entries with students from Framingham State, Northeastern, University of New Hampshire, UMass Amherst and MCPHS University participating in graduate and undergraduate categories.  Winning presenters receive an all expenses paid trip to the ISPE Annual Meeting in November to compete in the International Student Poster Competition plus a $500 cash prize. All those who entered should be congratulated for “putting themselves out there” and taking advantage of this great opportunity!

The following students competed in the undergraduate category:

Victoria D’Agostino – Northeastern University

Divyanka Gupta – MCPHS University

Kinza Hussain – MCPHS University

Katherine Lawson – University of New Hampshire

Max Marek – UMass Amherst

Stephanie Skouras – MCPHS University

 

The competition was intense and very close, with the winning poster presented by Kinza Hussain from MCPHS University.  Her poster was entitled: The Quest for a Better Vaccine: Characterization of Innate immune response to Vibrio Cholerae reveals the Importance of inflammatory cytokine IL-23.”  Second place was a virtual dead-heat between Victoria D’Agostino from Northeastern and Stephanie Skouras from MCPHS University with very little distance separating these three students.  Congratulations to all the undergrads who participated!  The Chapter would like to recognize and give sincere thanks to the volunteers who judged the undergraduate posters: Doyle Johnson from Hargrove Engineers and Constructors, Tim O’Connell from The Cardinal Group, Mike Levesque from GE Healthcare, Janet Tice from GMP Piping and Josh Scaralia from Azzur Group.

The graduate category featured the following students:

Lorena Baranda – Northeastern University

Kirivann Chhoeun – MCPHS University

Shahid Hussain – MCPHS University

Ironie Nagasena – Framingham State University

Here, the competition was equally intense and equally close, with the winning poster being presented by Kirivann Chhoeun from MCPHS University.  Her poster was entitled “Ensuring Protection of Human Research Subjects in Post-traumatic Settings.”  Lorena Baranda from Northeastern University came in a close second.  The Chapter would like to recognize and give sincere thanks to the volunteers who judged the undergraduate posters: Dawn Eriksen from Pfizer, John Spohn from Hargrove Engineers and Constructors, and Andre Walker from Andre Walker Consulting.

Participating students universally praised the event as well as the process used by the Chapter to judge their presentations.  In addition to working on their presentation skills in a friendly environment, students had the opportunity to meet and answer questions posed by ISPE professionals attending the April educational program.

With such a strong showing by the Chapter and great posters all the way around, everyone is optimistic about the Chapter’s chances to fare well at the ISPE International Poster Competition in November!