On April 21st, nearly 30 NYU Shanghai postdoctoral fellows and PhD students shared their research with the community at the “10th Anniversary NYU Shanghai Postdoctoral and Doctoral Research Assembly.” The full-day assembly, hosted by the Office of Graduate and Advanced Education (OGAE), was attended by more than 150 audience members.
The assembly, which consisted of poster exhibition and two plenary sessions of oral presentations, aimed to help young researchers develop communication skills, especially in terms of presenting their work to the general public, gain knowledge from other disciplines, and expand their networks. Faculty judges and public viewers awarded Best Oral Presentation and Best Poster prizes, respectively.
This was NYU Shanghai’s first event dedicated to showcasing postdoctoral and PhD research work. Around 20 former postdocs and PhDs returned to NYU Shanghai at the assembly for a homecoming. Provost Joanna Waley-Cohen welcomed the alumni and emphasized their value as a significant part of the NYU Shanghai’s experiment in higher education, bringing together top students from around the world who share a global ethos and the passion to acquire knowledge, learn skills, and and absorb values to become leaders dedicated to advancing the global good in their chosen fields.
The presenters represented a wide variety of academic fields, including biology, computer science, global health, neural science, physics, psychology, medical anthropology, and transportation engineering. Urban Studies PhD student, You Meizi, focused her research on the development of new towns. She said she valued the questions raised by the audience from different disciplinary backgrounds, saying, “Talking to people allowed us to really understand what residents truly care about, which greatly expanded the value of our research.”
Postdoc of Global Asia Bhagya Senaratne gave both an oral and poster presentation on the Sri Lankan crisis. The experience was challenging as she was also caring for her newborn baby, but she said it was a positive one. “It opened my eyes to my potential,” she said. “Hopefully, this will help me to continue to challenge myself and be a beautiful story I can tell my daughter in the future.”
Mathematics Postdoc Manuel Rissel, who introduced a controllability problem for the Navier–Stokes system, likened the experience to making pralines, as both require distilling technical ingredients into a small and digestible presentation. Physics PhD student Manish Chaudhary, presented on “Macroscopic entanglement generation in Bose-Einstein condensates and its applications in quantum information.” “This event was an exciting learning experience that every researcher should participate in once,” he said.
Chemistry PhD student Hu Shiyu, who presented on “A computational method for stability change prediction of proteins upon mutations,” said it was the first time she attended such an event. “I’m glad that I completed my talk smoothly. I’m looking forward to future assemblies and will definitely attend again,” she said.
The assembly ended with 119 audience members voting for the posters that impressed them the most, and a panel of NYU Shanghai faculty selecting the winning oral presentations. Chemistry PhD student Zhao Fanyu attended the event as an audience member. “It was a great opportunity to meet and listen to my peers who I never knew before and also get exposed to new disciplines and ideas,” she said. “I will definitely participate in this kind of event as a speaker in the future!”
Left: (left to right): Assistant Professor of Engineering Chen Zhibin (far left) presented Best Oral Presentation Award to (from left to right) PhD student in Neural Science Lu Yuhan, PhD student in Transportation Planning and Engineering Liu Yuhao, PhD student in Biology Lyu Xiaoai
Right: Professor of Practice in Mathematics Roberto Fernandez (far left) presented Best Oral Presentation Award to (from left to right) Postdoc in Mathematics Manuel Rissel, Postdoc in Psychology Zhang Mengrun, Postdoc in Physics Su Zhuang
Dean of Graduate and Advanced Education Eric Mao (far left) presented the Best Poster Award to (from left to right) Postdoc of Global Asia Bhagya Senaratne, Postdoc in Global Health Li Gen, Postdoc in Psychology Zhang Mengrun, PhD student in Biology Lyu Xiaoai, PhD student in Neural Science Lu Yuhan, and PhD student in Urban Studies You Meizi