Poster competition helps prospective Cambridge students shed light on their academic passions
“I was delighted with both the number and the quality of entries this year”
A competition to design an academic poster saw 125 young people from 90 UK schools take up the challenge laid by down by St John’s College on the theme of ‘dark’.
Ten sixth-formers have been awarded National Book Tokens as prizes after their research projects impressed the judging panel made up of Fellows, Directors of Studies and other academics, chaired by The Rev’d Dr Mark Oakley, Dean, tutor and Fellow of St John's.
This is the fourth year of the St John’s College Poster Competition, which launched in April, with entrants given the brief of completing a research project on an academic question or topic that interests them in relation to the theme.
Dr Victoria Harvey, Tutor for Undergraduate Admissions, said: “The poster competition provides prospective applicants with an excellent opportunity to explore particular areas of interest within their chosen subject and outside the school curriculum.
“The chance to undertake a piece of independent research and to receive feedback from Cambridge academics is useful both for developing their academic skills and as evidence of subject interest in candidates’ Personal Statements. I was delighted with both the number and the quality of entries this year, and particularly pleased with the variety of creative interpretations of this year’s theme.”
As well as submitting posters the students produced three-minute videos to present their findings and a bibliography. Their entries covered a wide range of subjects including: Biological and Physical Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, Architecture, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Archaeology, English, Mathematics, Psychological and Behavioural Sciences, History, Politics, Computer Science, Economics and Law.
The overall winner was Emilie De Charentenay for a poster on ‘The Essence of Fungal Bioluminescence’, while the prize for Best Poster went to Caelyn Boey for ‘Melatonin: hormone of the dark’. Best Video Presentation was awarded to Aria Puri for ‘Unveiling Hidden Dimensions in the Cosmic Shadows’ and Vincent McCabe and Narada Peiris received Joint Best Research for their respective posters on ‘The Fourth Dimension’ and ‘Diabetic Retinopathy: Leading to Darkness’.
The other five prize-winners were: Sophia Davey for ‘Are black holes really dark and how can they enlighten us about the universe?’ (Highly Commended for Research), Rachel Abratt for ‘Dark Humour in Dementia’ (Highly Commended for Link to Competition Theme), Sivakami Arunan for ‘Dark: How race guided immigration legislation in Commonwealth Britain’ (Highly Commended Video Presentation), Emily Darlington for ‘How scientists captured an image of the darkest part of the universe: a black hole’ (Joint Highly Commended Poster) and Sakshi Kokane for ‘The Dark Horse of Modern Neural Networks: Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs)’ (Joint Highly Commended Poster).
Published 26/9/2023