The annual Research, Innovation, Scholarship, Entrepreneurship (RISE) Expo took place on April 14. The RISE Expo gathers research and innovative projects of Northeastern Community members from every field, every campus, and every year of study.
It is the third entirely virtual RISE Expo, building on the success of the last two years’ experience since 2020. Over 460 presenters brought their works on RISE Day from across the globe. During the day, there were two live discussion rounds in the morning and afternoon. All Northeastern Community peers, staff, faculty, judges, and family and friends can join the live discussion sessions after registering for the event.
Source: RISE
RISE Award
April 15 was a day of success. The Expo organizer announced superior excellence presentations of the 2022 RISE Award.
Jonathan Merrin, Khoury College of Computer Science student, won the RISE award for entrepreneurship with his project exploring methods to improve the quality and performance of computer graphics rendering.
He and his mentor, Professor Mike Shah, started reading relevant papers together partway through the 2021 Fall semester. Last semester, Jonathan implemented a paper on mesh simplification for his academic program led by Professor Shah, and it served as the starter code for this project. He has kept pushing through the project since this year. They researched existing methods for global simplification and view-dependent for simplifying a mesh in a computer rendering area. They also proposed a new data structure that can make view-dependent simplification more dynamic and require less storage.
Left: A mesh at various levels of detail
Right: A model being simplified relative to a virtual camera
He said the project is not complete and they plan to continue refining it over the next year.
Connectivity
RISE Events collaborated with all Northeastern University’s colleges and campuses, and participants engaged in creative and enlightening discussions across our global university system.
During live discussions, many people joined the virtual networking tables. In the Computer & Information Science session, Asha Kiran Makwana, a CPS master’s student who majored in Analytics on the Silicon Valley campus, shared her project on developing a keyboard-less programming interface to bridge the communication gap between deaf and hearing people. She said this project aims to make programming more accessible to those with difficulty typing and promote inclusivity in using sign language. In addition, it could mean a person with a disability has an advantage in learning a universally valuable skill for the first time.
Asha won the Outstanding Research Award for interdisciplinary topics, centers, and institutes. She said,” My favorite part was the Live discussion, where we got to chat with other presenters, Audiences, and Judges. I made new connections and got a chance to peek at other presenters’ work, and they shared their valuable resources as well. Overall, it was a wonderful experience.”
KAPI (Keyboardless ASL-inspired Programming Interface)
Three students majoring in Regulatory Affairs from CPS on the Toronto campus, Nivedha Subramanian, Prithvi Bontula, and Krupa Barot, brought their research on finding a practical approach for dealing with healthcare workers (HCWs) having PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) due to pandemics within the hospital setting.
They collected approximately 1500 online questionnaire surveys to examine the techniques employed by hospitals in Canada and India. They said they plan to go further in concluding an appropriate solution to tackle the issue could lead to potential risks, such as compromised patient safety, delayed care, or difficulty in medical decision-making.
According to a survey, about 27.35 % of HCWs suffer from PTSD
Cross-disciplinary
RISE Expo can constitute the largest event of its kind in the nation also because of its disciplinary inclusion. It brings together influential, leadership, or innovative projects driven by students and faculties across the Health Sciences, Engineering, Technologies, Computer Information Systems, Law, Literature, Political Science, the Arts, Media and Design, and other fields.
In Art, Media & Design, many presenters showed their incredible artistic talent and design ability here.
Jihad Daoussi, who is obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the College of Science, shared her artwork at the session. She researched human psychology and spiritual presence and expressed inner characteristics with color.
Raissa Talehata majored in Digital Media with Interactive Design concentrations from CPS College, designed and developed a prototype to help reduce consumer food waste in daily life in the United States. She explored two ways to improve food literacy. The first is to help consumers visualize their kitchen inventory to prevent shopping impulsively, and the second is to ask consumers s questions about properly storing food. She made a website for this project showing all processes from research to test. She wants to help reshape consumer behavior through this project and shift the culture toward a greater appreciation for our food and all resources that went into it.
Infographic Exploring the Topic of Food Waste
In the Business category, Samiya Gupta, a freshman of D’Amore-McKim School of Business shares her topic on crypto assets in the public eye. Samiya noticed that cryptocurrencies had been a popular trend in recent years. It motivated her to start a conversation about cryptocurrencies with many people. But she found a vast knowledge gap between those who understand cryptocurrency and those who don’t, so Samiya studied what caused this information gap and how to fix it.
Source: YouTube
Compared with the previous form on-ground, the virtual RISE Expo linked the Northeastern Community global system. It allows participants to communicate without regional restrictions. Besides, while speakers have 4 hours to present their projects with a printed flyer in physical, there were a couple of weeks for displaying presenters’ prerecorded presentations online. What’s more, people can store these presentations permanently in digital video format.
Computer & Information Science session
However, there are still some problems here. Most participants got the chance to talk to other presenters, visitors, and judges, while a few circumstances where live discussion did not occur due to network fluctuations, system failures, and the reality of lives.
In general, the presenters interviewed by NUMedia expressed that they are joyful to have such an opportunity to present their projects and communicate with others.
Samiya said, “I would definitely encourage everyone interested in a topic to take a shot, or at least start researching it because I learned so much. Just doing this, it was really amazing.”
Although the 2022 RISE Event has ended, it will return to the Northeastern Community every spring. We encourage you to start preparing now. Rise project can be a research paper for a class, a piece of art made, a business plan written, or any other work that relies on discovery, originality, or innovation. Please follow the official RISE website for more information.