Welcome to the Virtual Meeting of the Minds! 

Carnegie Mellon University’s Undergraduate Research Symposium

Meeting of the Minds started in 1995 to showcase the research and creativity of our students and their mentors. Since then, it has established itself as a highly respected campus-wide Carnegie Mellon tradition. This is an unusual year for everyone. That is why we are holding our first ever virtual Meeting of the Minds. This event, this tradition, belongs to everyone at Carnegie Mellon. Faculty mentors play a critical role in the development of young scholars and artists. Everyone knows someone who is presenting at this event or who has played a role in a research endeavor. This is what makes Meeting of the Minds so unique, because it touches all faculty, staff and students who are associated with our university.

We will greatly miss the cacophony of voices, animated conversations, and live performances filling the Cohon University Center during our normal event. Nothing can take the place of experiencing the excitement firsthand and in person. Yet, this virtual platform is also an opportunity to reach people across the globe-- beyond our enormously engaged campus community-- who cannot attend in person. This includes proud parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles; our wonderful alumni, many of whom presented themselves at past Meeting of the Minds; our donors whose generosity makes supporting these students possible; our corporate partners whose commitment makes an enormous difference; our URO Committee who review our many SURG and SURF proposals with great care and diligence; our Trustees who insure our university’s health and our ability to hold these events; President Farnam Jahanian, Provost Jim Garrett and Vice Provost for Education Amy Burkert who have dedicated resources and shown a remarkable commitment to undergraduate research.  

The range and quality of work presented at this event is a good barometer of what takes place everyday and everywhere on and off our campus. Congratulations to our students for their amazing contributions, whether it be a cutting-edge medical breakthrough, a new approach to a pressing environmental problem, experimental materials to enhance our lives, an inventive artistic endeavor or an adaptable robot to navigate on earth and beyond. The results of their research on display today give all of us good reason to be proud of them, their faculty mentors, and the work that takes place at Carnegie Mellon. Not surprisingly, our students and faculty have shown remarkable resiliency and creativity in adapting to dramatically different and unprecedented circumstances. They moved forward and found alternative ways to advance their research and their creative contributions. What you see and hear today should make everyone optimistic about the future and the promise of this next generation.  

Getting the most out of Meeting of the Minds:

Along the top menu you will see a ‘Presentations’ link. This will take you to all student presentations, where you can click on an individual page to view a student’s work. Projects can be filtered using the menus on the left. You can also search for a presenter’s name or poster title. We encourage viewers to browse multiple student presentations to get a sense of the breadth and scope of undergraduate research and scholarly work taking place at Carnegie Mellon. 

Please also be sure to visit the live presentations on May 12th only (by choosing the ‘Live Sessions’ link) for the following groups.  

• Biomedical Engineering Design Course (1:00-4:00 PM EDT)
  
• BXA (Intercollege Degree Programs) Capstone (9:00 AM - noon; 3:00-6:45 PM EDT)
  
• College of Engineering Honors Thesis (9:00-11:30 AM EDT)
  
• Computer Science Research Practicum (9:30 AM - 3:00 PM EDT)
  
• Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences Honors Thesis (9:00 AM - 4:00 PM EDT)
  
• School of Computer Science Honors Thesis (9:35 AM - 4:00 PM EDT)
  
• Statistics and Data Science Thesis (10:30 AM - 1:00 PM EDT)
  

Anyone can view the posters, but you will be asked to create a Symposium account in order to comment on posters, enter the live sessions, and interact with other virtual attendees. Registration takes only a minute and does not require a CMU email. This is a very important part of our virtual Meeting of the Minds. You have a chance to learn about fields and contributions that you may never have known about and to engage with our next generation of ingenious problem solvers. Please comment on as many posters as you'd like and ask thoughtful questions about our presenters' work. They have put in countless hours on their projects and developing their posters, performances, projects, and presentations, so your questions and kudos are greatly appreciated!

Thank you for attending and for taking part in our virtual Meeting of the Minds.  

Stephanie Wallach, Richelle Bernazzoli, Brittany Allison, and Jen Weidenhof