“Research Days has become such an important campus event,” says Stephen Ortiz, assistant vice provost for academic enrichment. “As more and more undergraduates are conducting original research across the University, it is amazing to see the people who present and the pride they have in sharing their work.”

Nii Addy, a neuroscientist, Yale professor and mental health advocate, will deliver the Research Days keynote, titled “Living Your Best Life,” at 7 p.m. April 24 in UU-Old Union Hall.
Is it possible to achieve life satisfaction and emotional wellbeing, especially after the last couple of years? How do we deal with the pandemic, racial injustices, political tensions, financial stressors and emotional challenges? In Addy’s podcast, “The Addy Hour,” he has conversations that are at the intersection of brain science, mental health, faith, culture and social justice. In this upbeat, interactive session, he’ll explore topics and questions people are thinking about but may hesitate to discuss.

The Graduate School will run a Three Minute Thesis Competition starting at noon April 27 in UU-Mandela Room. The program challenges students to present research to a non-specialist audience in three minutes or less using only one PowerPoint slide. This year, Binghamton will award prizes to the first ($500), second ($400) and third ($300) place winners, as well as a People’s Choice winner ($150) who will be selected by the audience in real time.

Later that day, the Office of Research Advancement will open a show featuring entries from the 2023 Art of Science contest. The art opening begins at 4 p.m. April 27 in the Center of Excellence Atrium at the Innovative Technologies Complex. Winners of the competition will be revealed during the reception.

Research Days will conclude on April 28 with two large poster sessions in UU-Mandela Room and UU-Old Union Hall. Students from a variety of disciplines will present over 175 posters highlighting research projects conducted with Binghamton mentors. The sessions will run from 10:30 a.m.-noon and from 2-3:30 p.m.

“We often look at the statistics of how many students are doing high-impact practices such as research,” Ortiz says. “But Research Days gives me a chance to see the students involved and the impact their research experience has had on them while at Binghamton.”

Research Days 2023 is sponsored by Academic Affairs, Division of Research, Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, McNair Scholars Program, Undergraduate Research Center, Center for Civic Engagement and The Graduate School.

Many more activities are planned throughout the week.

Highlights of the weeklong program include a talk by NPR science reporter Richard Harris, campus-wide student poster sessions featuring more than 175 projects, the opening of a new Art of Science exhibit and a two-day conference focused on human rights research.

The schedule includes the first-ever Ignite session in upstate New York, in which graduate students and post-docs will tell a rapid-fire story about their research in just five minutes. There will also be lab tours, lectures, workshops and other programs.

“Research Days gives people from all different parts of campus a chance to see what their colleagues are working on and to appreciate the depth and diversity of scholarship at Binghamton,” said Valerie Imbruce, who chairs the committee that organizes the program.

The theme for this year, the eighth-annual installment of Research Days, is Rethinking Research, and that will be the topic of an undergraduate panel at 12:45 p.m. April 12 in UU-111. The students will reflect on what they expected when they got involved in research and what they found, both personally and professionally.

“For students, Research Days opens opportunities to present their work, maybe for the first time, and to begin to feel part of a community of people engaged in the creation of knowledge,” said Imbruce, who is director of the Undergraduate Research Center and the Office of External Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards.

In addition to her office, Research Days are organized and sponsored by the Division of Academic Affairs, Center for Civic Engagement, College of Community and Public Affairs, Decker School of Nursing, Division of Research, The Graduate School, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and McNair Scholars Program.

This year’s signature events include:

How I Write: David Sloan Wilson
4-5:30 p.m. April 8, SL-212
The Writing Initiative’s How I Write series presents David Sloan Wilson, SUNY distinguished professor of biology and anthropology and president of the Evolution Institute, on the occasion of the publication of his new book, “This View of Life” (Pantheon).

Ignite Binghamton University
4-6 p.m. April 9, UU-Undergrounds
Five-minute research talks by graduate students and postdocs.

NPR’s Richard Harris on the Need for Rigor in Research
7 p.m. April 10, AM-189 (Admissions Building)
Richard Harris, a science writer who has been reporting on NPR’s flagship news programs for more than 30 years, will give a talk inspired by his most recent book, titled “Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions.”

Art of Science Opening Reception
4-6 p.m. April 11, Center of Excellence Atrium
An exhibit of entries from Binghamton University’s third-annual Art of Science competition. Light refreshments will be served.

Campus-wide Student Poster Sessions
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 2-3:30 p.m. April 12, UU-Mandela Room
Undergraduate and graduate students from all academic disciplines showcase their research.

Technologies of Human Rights Representation
9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. April 13, Art Museum
This SUNY Conversations in the Disciplines event will examine the moral parameters of human rights research, literary and historical dimensions of human rights, and the role of quantitative and technological methods of research.

The fourth-annual Research Days will be held April 22-24, featuring a keynote speech, student poster sessions, laboratory visits for area students and more. This year’s theme is sustainability.

“This is a great opportunity to showcase the research that is being done at Binghamton University by faculty and students, and it also gives us a chance to focus on a topic that is very important to our campus and our community,” said Donald Loewen, vice provost for undergraduate education and chair of the committee that organizes Research Days.

Raj Patel, a food activist and author, will be this year’s keynote speaker. His talk, “Stuffed & Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System,” will begin at 7 p.m. April 22 in the UU-Mandela Room and will be followed by a book signing.

Patel, a research professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, and a senior research associate at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University in South Africa, holds degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University. He has worked for the World Bank and World Trade Organization and is now a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First.

Today there are 1 billion people starving and 1.5 billion overweight. The U.S. is the most overweight country on Earth, and has 48 million people who are “food insecure.” In Patel’s lecture, he’ll address how this came about and what can be done to stop it.

Research Days poster presentations will take place at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Friday, April 24, also in the Mandela Room. The events are a chance for undergraduate and graduate students from all academic disciplines to showcase their research. More than 100 students plan to participate this year, up from around 80 in 2014.

In addition to these events, Binghamton faculty will again be invited to introduce students to their scholarly work during classes April 22-24. Several researchers will open their labs to area middle and high school students as well.

For more details about Research Days, visit: http://go.binghamton.edu/researchdays.

This year’s keynote will be delivered by Jonathan D. Moreno, a philosopher and historian who specializes in the intersection of bioethics, culture, science and national security. His talk, titled “Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century,” begins at 7 p.m. March 26 in the UU-Mandela Room and will be followed by a book signing.

Moreno, the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor of Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, is also a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. In his talk, he will explore the role of the national security community and the field of neuroscience in preparing the military and intelligence services for the 21st century. Super soldiers; drugs that ease fear, alter memories and reduce the need to sleep; internal and external neurostimulation; advanced prosthetics and other initiatives may change the nature of warfare and raise many complex ethical, legal and social issues.

“Research Days gives the University an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of our researchers at all levels,” said Donald Loewen, vice provost for undergraduate education and chair of the group that organizes Research Days. “It’s also a way to help undergraduates recognize the role of research at the University.”

Donald Nieman, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said faculty members across the disciplines are encouraged to take several minutes during class to introduce themselves as scholars. “Bringing research and teaching together enriches learning, nurtures critical thinking and communication skills and helps students understand how knowledge is created,” he said.

Binghamton students will have several opportunities to present their work during Research Days. Two campus-wide poster sessions are planned March 28 in the UU-Mandela Room, one at 11 a.m. and another at 1 p.m. Each will feature more than 40 student posters focusing on research in the sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities.

Other Research Days events include:

• A workshop focused on research funding opportunities for graduate students and post-doctoral associates. The session, organized by the Office of Sponsored Programs, will run from 10:30 a.m.-noon March 27 in UU-215. Staff members will highlight funding opportunities for graduate students at any stage.
• An Environmental Genetics Minisymposium and Poster Session, to be held from 3-5 p.m. March 27, in UUW-324. This event, sponsored by the Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence in Health Sciences, seeks to build a community of researchers on campus with a shared interest in gene by environment interactions.
• A special installment in the Faculty Breakfast Series focused on conducting research with students, to be held at 8:30 a.m. March 28 in the Chenango Room.
• Newing College Research Day, to be held from 2-4 p.m. March 29 on the Newing side of the Chenango-Champlain Collegiate Center.

For more information about Research Days, which is sponsored by the Provost’s Office, the Division of Research, the Undergraduate Research Center and the McNair Scholars.

The presentations, which will take place at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday, April 19, are just one part of the three-day event scheduled for April 17-19. Research Days was first held last year, shortly after the opening of the Undergraduate Research Center.

“This year, we started earlier, went out with better information and we encouraged people to become involved,” Undergraduate Research Center Director Janice McDonald said. “This is an event for the entire community.”

This year’s Research Days will feature more events in more places, along with more student poster submissions from a greater variety of disciplines, McDonald said.

Events include tours of research facilities such as the Engineering and Science Building and the Analytical and Diagnostics Laboratory; student and faculty research panels; and tours for local eighth-graders. A complete list of events may be found at http://go.binghamton.edu/researchdays.

Another new feature is a keynote speaker: Shankar Vedantam, a science correspondent for National Public Radio. Vedantam, who spent 10 years at The Washington Post before joining NPR in 2011, is the author of “The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives.” He will speak at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, in the Mandela Room.

Vedantam’s talk, which is also being promoted by WSKG, brings more visibility to Research Days and could appeal to Greater Binghamton residents, said Donald Loewen, vice provost for undergraduate education.

“What can we do to present the impact of research on the community and the world more broadly?” he said. “This (talk) gives us an entry to the community and presents them with a chance to come in and see Binghamton University as a research institution.”

The student poster sessions will be linked by a Campus Research Celebration at 1 p.m. Friday, April 19, in Old Union Hall. President Harvey Stenger and other University leaders will discuss the importance of research, while award-winning student researchers will be recognized. Those being honored include two Goldwater Scholarship recipients and the 12 recipients of the 2013 Summer Scholar and Artists Program Fellowship. Faculty mentors will also be saluted.

Not all students get the chance to present research at national conferences, so the poster sessions will provide a great opportunity for many, McDonald said.

“The students who are presenting research love to talk about it and have people engage them,” she said. “They like to be questioned or challenged and go into more detail about their work. They are looking forward to the sessions.”

The sessions are also valuable for students who are considering their own research projects, McDonald added.

“We know undergraduates are very, very interested in doing research,” she said. “They want to see what other students are doing and what they are capable of doing. It’s an educational process for those who aren’t doing research yet. They can say: ‘This is what I can do and get involved in.’”

Faculty can benefit from attending the sessions, too, Loewen said.

“It’s amazing to find out what students from different disciplines are doing on campus,” said Loewen, who is urging faculty members to discuss their own research with students in classes over the three days. “I hope this will inspire faculty to think about ways that they can collaborate with students in their own discipline.”

Loewen and McDonald praised the support that Research Days has received from the University community. They singled out Rachel Coker, director of research advancement, for organizing many of the events, and Shanise Kent, associate director of the McNair Scholars Program, for leading the poster sessions.

“We’ve gotten tremendous cooperation from everybody in terms of participation,” Loewen said. “Everybody has been extraordinarily cooperative.”

Loewen and McDonald agree that Research Days is one important step in advancing undergraduate research on campus. “People are talking,” McDonald said. “More people are becoming aware of (research). It’s getting into people’s awareness. It’s an ongoing process that will take time.”

“One of our fundamental objectives with Research Days is to help all of our undergraduates — even those in big, 100-level classes — understand: ‘You are part of a research university. What does that mean?’” Loewen said. “If they stop in the Mandela Room (on Friday), they are going to see some amazing projects. They will see the kinds of research their peers are conducting. That’s a good educational experience for someone to have.”

Ron Miles summed up the theme of the Binghamton Research Days’ keynote program with a quote from Albert Einstein: “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be research.”

Miles, associate dean for research in the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, was one of several speakers at the keynote event and poster session on April 25. The program was the central event of Binghamton Research Days.

“What determines whether you’re a researcher or not is how you respond to the realization that you don’t know what you’re doing,” said Jean-Pierre Mileur, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs. “If it panics you and frightens you and it doesn’t draw you on to approach your own ignorance as a problem to be manipulated and solved, then you probably belong in another line of work.

“But all the people who have spoken today share that response, that curiosity in response to the knowledge of their own ignorance,” he said.

Omowunmi Sadik, professor of chemistry, briefly led the audience through the development of anesthesia through anecdotes about researchers Humphry Davy and Alexander Williamson. Davy frequently inhaled nitrous oxide to experiment with its effects, and Williamson tested the effects of ether on himself by placing an ether-soaked handkerchief on his face while alone in his office.

The researchers Sadik mentioned headed where others had never been before, and in many ways, so did all of the speakers.

“Don’t be afraid to chart your own course, to let your research interests take you where they are headed, even if others haven’t gone that way before,” said Thomas Dublin, distinguished professor of history. “Trust your inclinations; trust yourself to figure out how to do the work that results from your choices.”

Most of the speakers believe research is valuable because it challenges the limits of knowledge and goes beyond what can be learned from a textbook.

“We spend so much of our time learning little tiny tidbits of information,” said Miles, a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering. “We study, we do homework, we look in the back of the book to make sure the answer is there, … and then you get to college. You discover that in this world, the answer isn’t always in the back of the book. You need to discover what is true, what is right, and then you realize that you really don’t know for sure if anything you’ve done is right, and that’s really unsettling.”

The keynote program was bookended by a poster presentation session. Undergraduate and graduate students presented research in subjects ranging from psychology to art history to microbiology.

Robert Dextre, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, was both the student speaker and a presenter. He presented research he conducted during an internship with NASA last summer. Dextre said Binghamton Research Days was a great opportunity to express his passion and encourage others to do the same. He first became involved in research with Associate Professor Mohammad Younis in mechanical engineering and his work with micro-electrical mechanical systems in the summer of 2010.

“I had no idea what it was at first, and I wasn’t even sure if I would like it,” Dextre said.

Dextre presented his work at conferences, enabling him to develop his presentation, professional and networking skills. “I gained more knowledge and skills than I could ever have obtained from a textbook,” he said. “My experience was far more rewarding than I could have ever imagined and much more useful than any homework assignment.”

All of the day’s speakers and presenters had one thing in common: a passion for research and learning about what is on the cutting-edge.

“Each one of them in a different way embodies the idea that being a researcher, being interested in the business of knowledge creation and being on the cutting edge of your discipline makes you a fundamentally different and more interesting teacher,” Mileur said.

This was the idea behind Binghamton Research Days: making connections between research and what happens in the classroom. Faculty were encouraged to introduce their own scholarship in classes during those days. The schedule also included seminars, workshops and laboratory tours.

Mileur said the reason people learn at universities is to interact with people who create knowledge, people on the cutting edge. For him, resources such as books and websites don’t represent the cutting edge; people do, and these people are passionate about their work.

“If I have one big idea to communicate to those of you here who may be thinking about a life of scholarship,” Dublin said, “it is that you have to feel something very powerful inside you, motivating you toward the research course that you propose to embark on.”