Left to Right: Dr. Baljit Singh, Mykyta Shvets, Leah Macfarlane, Chi Vu, Dr. Debby Burshtyn. Photo Credit: Undergraduate Research Initiative

Computer Science Well Represented at the SURE Summer Symposium

Students from the Department of Computer Science were awarded first and third place, as well as an honourable mention, for their research work.

By Ellen Redlick

The annual summer SURE: Student Undergraduate Research Experience Symposium announced its winners on August 31. The symposium, organized by the Undergraduate Research Initiative, was a hybrid event that included both online and in-person components. 

Students submitted a video presentation of their research work on Canvas, the USask learning system. 38 judges from across USask viewed these presentations. Each presentation was reviewed by three judges and their scores determined the winners. 

The in-person portion of this hybrid event took place in Convocation Hall on August 25. Students showcased their research through posters or laptop presentations. Supervisors, research colleagues, judges, and others interested in the research attended this part of the event. 

Six students from computer science participated in the event, which had 65 entries from departments across the University. 

Awards and Recognition

The top three submissions were awarded $300, $200, and $100 prizes for first, second, and third place, respectively. Honourable mentions were given to five students, who received a certificate and a USask water bottle. 

Three students from the Department of Computer Science were recognized for their research at this summer's SURE symposium. 

Chi Vu (Computer Science) was awarded first place for her work on "Visually Guided Scientific Workflow Management Framework". Chi is an NSERC USRA student working under the supervision of Dr. Banani Roy in the Interactive Software Engineering and Analytics Lab (iSE Lab).

Mykyta Shvets (Computer Science) took home third place for his research entitled "Magnetic Force Graph Layouts for Cytoscape". Mykyta is an NSERC USRA student under Dr. Debajyoti Mondal in the Visualization, Geometry and Algorithms (VGA) Lab. 

Amanda Ewen (Applied Computing in Bioinformatics) also received an honourable mention for her project "Classifying lentil testa (seed coat) patterns using unsupervised learning". Amanda is an NSERC USRA student under Dr. Lingling Jin in the Bioinformatics Lab. 

Read more about the SURE Symposium here.