Research Week 2022: Winners of the Student Competitions

At Bishop’s University, one way to showcase research is through the annual Research Week. Among other activities, from March 28 to April 1, the Office of Research and Graduates studies organized a showcase for our research activities, including a Research Poster and a Research Snapshot competition to highlight our talented student researchers. For both competitions, undergraduate and graduate students had to present a research project for which they made an active and significant contribution.

While posters were up all week in Centennial Lobby, the official public presentation of posters on March 31^st was an opportunity for students participating in the Research Posters competition to practice presenting their research project in a conference or a meeting. Two prizes were awarded by the jury, and submissions were evaluated based on the content and layout of the posters.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Natural Sciences, the winner was Victoria Benny of the Department of Biological Sciences for the project Scent discrimination of antibiotic-treated and intact male ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) by conspecifics. Thanks to an Undergraduate Research Assistantship – Plan Réussite award, Victoria was a research assistant of Dr. Marylène Boulet of the Department of Biological Sciences during the Winter 2022 semester. Victoria examined the effect of antibiotic treatment on the scent of healthy ring-tailed lemurs, highly social primates that communicate via scent secretion, by measuring the response their odorant generates in other lemurs. Such research allowed them to better understand scent perception in primates, which includes humans.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Social Sciences, Education and Business, the winner was Kyra Simons of the Department of Psychology for the project Gender differences in climate worry and parental role. Under the supervision of Catherine Malboeuf-Hurtubise, Kyra examined gender differences in climate change worry and perceived parental role in Quebec parents. Intriguing considerations regarding future research were prompted through parent’s responses.

After the official public presentation of the posters, the Bishop’s community was invited to attend the Research Snapshots competition, during which participants had only three minutes to present their research project in a language accessible for the general public. Three prizes were awarded by the jury, and submissions were evaluated based on participants’ presentation and scientific communication skills, as well as the structure and content of their presentation.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Natural Sciences, the winner was Virginia Rufina Marquez-Pacheco of the Department of Physics & Astronomy for the project Understanding Accretion in Quasars. Quasars are extremely bright supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies that consume hot gas from their environment. Recently, some quasars were observed to dim very suddenly. Since the summer of 2021, under the supervision of Dr. John Ruan of the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Virginia has been working on understanding this newly found behavior using Ultraviolet and X-ray images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

In the category Undergraduate Students – Social Sciences, Education and Business, the winner was Audrey Richard of the Department of Psychology for the project Are you still watching? The antecedents and outcomes of binge-watching. Under the supervision of Dr. Courtney Plante of the Department of Psychology, Audrey examined the potential affective outcomes of binge-watching in terms of well-being whilst taking into consideration the viewer’s motivations to binge-watch and the differing phenomenology of the activity. Her findings highlight the importance to adopt a nuanced approach to understanding binge-watching, and the potential of an extended immersion into fictious universes in providing support to individuals.

In the category Graduate Students, the winner was Samuel Gagnon-Hartman of the Department of Physics & Astronomy for the project How fast is the Universe expanding, Really? Supervised by Dr. John Ruan of the Department of Physics & Astronomy and thanks to a Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s (CGS M), Samuel is enabling a measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe using gravitational waves. This method suffers from biases which Samuel is working to correct using advanced methods in statistics and machine learning.

Research is a fundamental part of Bishop’s University’s mandate. Our student and faculty researchers contribute, and must continue to contribute to the generation of new knowledge, to mobilizing this knowledge to relevant community partners and research users and, in doing so, contribute to innovation and economic development of the region, province and country. Congratulations to our winners, and to all the participants. Thank you for showcasing the amazing research taking place at Bishop’s. You can read more about Research Week in the April edition of The Campus.

Victoria-Benny-and-Kyra-Simons — From left to right, Victoria Benny and Kyra Simons won the Research Poster competition.

Richard Marquez Pacheco Gagnon Hartman — From left to right, Audrey Richard, Virginia Rufina Marquez-Pacheco and Samuel Gagnon-Hartman won the Research Snapshot competition.