Many thanks to the students, faculty, staff and administrators who made our first attempt at this event a success. We are indebted to the hard work of our judges: Professor Gary Lim, Vice Provost for Research Neil Ringler, Dean Scott Shannon, and Professor Andrea Parker, as well as our video crew and cast: Ben Ballerstein, Danielle Preiss, Erica Tauzer and Kapil Mandrekar. In particular, Ben wrote, filmed and directed our viral videos, which is an enormous gift of his talent and time.

Congratulations as well to our winner, Jenn Yantachka! We are in the process of working with the Office of Communications on the web feature on her research, and will post a link to that as soon as it is available. Congratulations also to Anna Stewart and Roman Yavich, our runners up. To everyone who made it, the talent within the graduate student body was on full display.

Greetings Research Enthusiasts! We are pleased to announce the first annual ESF GSA "elevator pitch" contest and research mixer. For those unaware of the concept, the idea is that you find yourself in an elevator with someone important: possibly a potential employer, luminary in your field, or grant administrator, and you have very little time to communicate effectively what you are working on. Can you do it in 60 seconds? Our contest will give you the opportunity to try.

We will also be featuring some terrific prizes, including $500 for the winner, and other prizes for the runners up, all selected by popular vote. We are grateful for sponsorship from both the ESF Office of Communications and the Office of Instruction and Graduate Studies (OIGS). The Office of Communications has agreed to do a web feature on the winner of our contest (see an example here). OIGS will be helping us provide cash prizes to the winner and runners up (non M.S. presenters are eligible).

What do you need to do?
Even if you are not 100% sure you are presenting, go ahead and RSVP below so we can keep track of numbers. Also, take a moment to watch a brief Q&A video above from Gary Lim, Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship. We will send you a few pointers once you have RSVP'd. You can see our "teaser trailer" below.