Presenting my Research as a DePaul Undergraduate Student
This weekend I had the privilege of presenting my research at the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium (CAURS). This conference includes all the major schools in the Chicago area: DePaul, Loyola, Northwestern, UChicago, UIC, and more. This event was such a great experience and I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to go.
I am a sophomore computer science major at DePaul, and I have been working on a research project in the realm of data science for just about three months. My project is titled “Predicting 90-Day Post Liver Transplant Mortality Using Machine Learning”. Although the subject is less than cheery, the application is really exciting. Essentially, we are using this huge set of historical data from liver transplants that have occurred in the United States to train an artificial intelligence model to find the best possible match for livers that become available with candidates on the transplant waiting list. I have only been working on this project for a few months, but we have seen some great progress and I am very happy with the work we have been able to get done so far.
I am working on this project with a graduate student and a professor who serves as my advisor. DePaul does a great job of letting students do research. Being an undergraduate, it can be rare at other colleges to get opportunities to work on research, let alone present the work you have done. That is why this event was such an amazing experience for all of us that got to attend. I am a part of a group of five students from DePaul who get to participate in data science research projects that are funded by the Motorola Solutions Foundation. We were sponsored to attend this event through this program. Additionally, there were many other students from DePaul that were sponsored by the university to come and present their work. DePaul does a good job of providing these opportunities for students who want to explore research as an undergraduate and get support from their university.
This event was such a great opportunity for all who got to attend. We, as undergraduate students, got to present our hard work in a professional setting and network with other students who were doing the same. I would not have been able to be a part of this event if I was not at DePaul or in Chicago, and that is something that cannot go overlooked!
~Jeff