View into student research

View into student research

By Communications Staff

February 17, 2017

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Two Queen鈥檚 students are competing in a national video competition to highlight their research.

Yuliya Nesterova and Sterling Mitchell are among 40 students from across Canada competing in NSERC鈥檚 contest, with the aim of getting Canadians excited about science and engineering research through one-minute online videos highlighting their own work.

[Yuliya Nesterova]
Yuliya Nesterova 鈥  

The 25 most-viewed videos as of Tuesday, Feb. 28 will move on to the finals where they will be judged by a panel.  A total of 15 cash prizes will be handed out, including the top prize of $3,500.

A master鈥檚 student in algebraic geometry, Ms. Nesterova took an animated approach for her video which describes how she is testing a beta invariant to try and understand its convexity.

To make the video, Ms. Nesterova spent three months drawing the images and then taught herself how to use an open-source animation program.

It has been a beneficial learning experience, she says.

鈥(The project) made me learn more math. There were two things that didn't end up getting animated that took a week of problem-solving and researching to try and get right, work out how the shapes would look,鈥 she says. 鈥淎nd then it was too difficult to animate, so it got tossed out. But you're always learning something about your topic from unexpected sources.鈥

[Mitchell Sterling]
Mitchell Sterling 鈥 

In his video , Mr. Mitchell, a third-year geological engineering student, introduces viewers to the work by Guy Narbonne (Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering) and his research team at the recently-designated UNESCO World Heritage site in Newfoundland.

In making the video, Mr. Mitchell utilized some of the skills he has developed through working at Studio Q.

鈥淎s a geological engineer, I believe Dr. Narbonne鈥檚 research gives us fascinating insight into the history of our world,鈥 he says. 鈥淎s Mistaken Point was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage site, I thought it would be a great time to highlight his research.鈥

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