More than 300 graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, faculty, staff, and guests filled the Ballroom at the Hanover Inn last Thursday for the annual Guarini Poster Session. The goal was to explain complex research in terms a non-expert could follow – clearly, briefly, and without losing the substance.
This year's event also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Guarini School, which serves as the home for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars at Dartmouth.
For the first time, postdocs joined the poster session, expanding the range and depth of the work on display. A total of 54 participants across 24 disciplines presented research posters on topics ranging from the mineralogy of Martian salt flats and the cultural framework of popular romance novels to next-generation grid security and cancer immunotherapy.
Dean of the Guarini School Jon Kull '88 and Yanjun "Keene" Wei GR '04, founder and CEO of VitsGen Therapeutics, opened the session with Wei delivering remarks to the assembled crowd.
As he prepares to step down from his role as Dean in June, Dean Kull said the poster session ranks among his favorite events of the year. "It's an important opportunity," he said, "for presenters to practice communicating their science to a broad yet informed audience–and that's critical for scientists today."
Wei, who earned his PhD in chemistry from Dartmouth in 2004, spoke about how his time at Dartmouth shaped not only his development as a researcher, but his broader outlook. Reflecting on his own journey from a small province in northern Thailand to founding two pharmaceutical companies in Shanghai, he was candid about the role communication played and the work it took to develop it.
"I was a bad communicator, but I wanted to improve," Wei said of his graduate school days. He credited the breadth of Dartmouth's liberal arts environment as formative, and offered a direct message to the room: good science is only part of the equation. "You have a good product, you have a good strategy, you have a good business–but you need to also present to a different audience."
Five judging panels, composed of faculty and administrative leaders from across campus, evaluated posters based on visual clarity and the presenters' ability to communicate their work in terms understandable to a non-specialist audience, all within a three-minute window.
Five posters were recognized with top prizes by faculty and staff judges for the content, clarity, and engagement of their presentations:
Each winner received a $300 prize.
New this year, attendees were invited to cast votes for their favorite poster, adding a community voice to the evening's recognition. The inaugural People's Choice Award went to:
This year's poster session was a reminder that rigorous research and clear communication go hand in hand, and that the ability to make complex work accessible to a broad audience is as essential to science as the work itself.