The 9th Merck/MIT BMES Undergraduate Poster Research Session took place in the Bush Room on the evening of Thursday, November 21, 2013. Undergraduate students across the Institute were encouraged to submit posters from their UROPs or summer jobs, allowing them the opportunity to win prizes for their submissions and network with scientists from industry. A total of 22 submissions were judged based on the submitted abstracts, student’s contribution to the project goal, poster display and quality of the student’s discussion/responses. Members of the judging committee were made up of MIT alumni; Erica Little and Ambrose Wesel (from Merck), Matthew Holsti (Pfizer) and Prof. Mark Bathe and Steven Nagle, PhD (BE).
The first place award, which included a cash prize from Merck of $500, went to BE/Course 20 senior Ebaa Al-Obeidi for her poster entitled, “Endolymphatic duct and sac development in the zebrafish inner ear.” Ebaa conducted her research in the Megason Lab at the Harvard Medical School Department of Systems Biology.

The award for second place went to BE/Course 20 senior Fangdi Sun for her poster, “Cationic transporter PET: a noninvasive method to monitor Arginine auxotrophy of sarcomas “. Third place went to freshmen, and sisters, Charlotte and Emily Keeley. The Student Choice Award winner was Course 9 senior David Han.

The event was coordinated by the MIT BMES student executive board, with MIT senior and BMES Student Chair Amita Gupta expertly leading the evening’s proceedings.

The Biomedical Engineering Society is the professional society for students, faculty, researchers and industry working in the broad area of biomedical engineering. The local MIT student chapter has its departmental home in BE and is provided faculty advisement by Prof. Linda Griffith.

MIT BMES website: http://bmes.mit.edu/