The Undergraduate Poster Award Competition (UPAC) is a fantastic opportunity at BPS for undergraduates to practice their scientific communication skills. Winners receive their prizes in front of everyone on Monday as a reward for their hard work.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend UPAC as an undergraduate since I was in China. That’s a little sad. ಥ_ಥ (But on the bright side, I won the graduate poster competitions during my Ph.D.!)

This year marks my second time serving as a UPAC judge, and I wanted to make it a bit more special compared to last time.

Coincidentally, BPS took place at the same time as the NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco. As a scientist from the Bay Area, I decided to embrace the theme—I wore an All-Star jersey and brought two small souvenirs from the All-Star court on Friday to share with students in my judging group.

Everyone in my group did a fantastic job. There are two students, William Humphreys and William Sandel from Louisiana Tech University, presenting their work together, so I decided to give them my gifts and asked for a picture to include in this blog.

Not everyone will win the competition, I didn't win the first two times as well, but at the very least, they get the chance to show off their research work. Sometimes we don’t win because of experience differences. Other times, it’s just luck (we all know science requires a bit of luck!). I hope everyone enjoyed the competition and will come back again next year.

The more times we try, the higher the probability of winning a prize. 😊