Science students spoke on a range of topics. Desislava Petkova ’05 described how images could be more effectively found in Internet searches. Suprawee Tepsuporn ’05 presented research on identifying immunity to an AIDS-like disease in some mice. Others talked about improving art conservation and looking at fertility patterns in rats.

Petkova’s presentation seemed simple on its face, with the complexity of the work and thinking sitting just beneath the surface, like complex computer code driving simple images on a screen. In her presentation, titled “Cluster-Based Relevance Models for Automatic Image Annotation,” Petkova showed a photograph of a tiger and explained the way the image is annotated to identify it for Internet search retrieval.

Petkova then went on to describe how clusters of similar images—such as a tiger with rocks and a fox with rocks—can teach researchers about ways to improve data retrieval methods by looking at the images themselves, instead of using word-descriptors to identify them.

“I believe it is a great idea to give people [a place] to present their work,” Petkova said of the symposium. “It is a valuable experience, but it is also a lot of fun to talk about something you have worked on very hard for so long.”

The symposium, in its thirtieth year, boasted 63 participants presenting research in eight scientific fields, including biochemistry, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, computer science, mathematics and statistics, earth and environmental science, and physics.

The symposium ran three sessions simultaneously in Cleveland’s three large lecture halls for over five hours, competing with the spring breezes and bright sunshine outside.

Tepsuporn presented research on immunity in some mice to the “murine” AIDS virus, which is similar to the AIDS virus in humans. While there is no research currently showing humans who are completely immune to HIV, some mice’s immune systems can attack and overcome the virus completely.

“Understanding of the immune response mechanism present in the murine AIDS-resistant mice may provide new insights to an immune response found in humans,” Tepsuporn said.

This summer Tepsuporn will be working on a journal article based on her work with Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Sharon Stranford.

“I think it’s wonderful, the students present so well,” said President Joanne V. Creighton, who clears time in her schedule to attend the science symposium every year. “The whole thing has a very professional quality,” she added.

Presentations were almost all in PowerPoint, and many involved videos of the research in motion—with animated DNA strands separating themselves in slow motion, photographs of lab equipment splitting lasers with mirrors, and periodic points spinning around axes like figure skaters in a pairs competition.
Giving students public speaking and presentation experience is one of the symposium’s goals, said this year’s director Margaret Robinson, professor of mathematics. Synthesizing months of research into a 15-minute presentation “pushes students to understand things in a different way,” Robinson said.

“Having the chance to speak in front of a large audience and clearly explain a year’s worth of work in 15 minutes is both challenging and rewarding,” said Karly David ’05, who gave a presentation based on her thesis, “The Effects of Complete Freund’s Adjuvant (CFA) on Mating Behavior in the Norway Rat.”

Research has indicated that CFA, “increases embryo growth and pup birth weight,” explained David. This past research looked at CFA as working through the rat’s immune system. David took that research one step further and looked at CFA’s effects on mating behavior. She found that rats treated with CFA had the same timing and frequency of specific mating behaviors as those in the control group, which demonstrates the validity of looking at CFA via the immune system.