West Virginia University Undergraduate Honored by the Council on
Undergraduate Research
Biochemistry major Megan Lauris and her faculty mentor, Dr. Samantha Minc of the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery – School of Medicine Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, have earned the honor of participating in the 24th annual Posters on the Hill event, a selective poster session sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), based in Washington, DC. After reviewing 350 highly competitive applications from undergraduate students from colleges and universities nationwide, only 60 projects were selected for this year’s undergraduate research showcase.
Megan Lauris’s winning submission is entitled “Understanding diabetes and vascular disease-related amputations in West Virginia”.
The annual event affords an elite group of students the opportunity to share their undergraduate research with Members of Congress, congressional staff, federal government officials, academics and other researchers. CUR’s annual Posters on the Hill event is an important opportunity for lawmakers to see how federal programs and dollars impact students and faculty, and to learn about the value of undergraduate research. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Posters on the Hill event has gone virtual. Megan’s presentation will be uploaded to Twitter and can be viewed via retweet by the CUR National Office (https://twitter.com/CURinAction) with Twitter tags of #POH2020 and #POHGoesVirtual. The Virtual Posters on the Hill event is set to take place on Tuesday April 21, 2020 from 12-8 p.m. (EST).
This is the fifth consecutive year WVU students have been selected to participate in the event. Each year, the Office of Undergraduate Research facilitates student participation in the Posters on the Hill event.
The Council on Undergraduate Research (www.cur.org) supports faculty development for high-quality undergraduate student-faculty collaborative research and scholarship. Over 800 institutions and more than 11,000 individuals belong to CUR. CUR believes that the best way to capture student interest and create enthusiasm for a discipline is through research in close collaboration with faculty members.
