The NEXIS lab at the School of Information Studies (iSchool) has planned four student talks and a research showcase for the week of May 1.
NEXIS student researcher Kalia Barrow explains her project to iSchool faculty member Carlos Caicedo at the Spring 2016 Future Friday showcase.
NEXIS (New Explorations in Information and Science) is a student-based, membership-driven research lab at the iSchool. Student innovators initiate IT projects, learning and supporting their peer innovators and building upon today’s emerging technologies. NEXIS members freely work on independent projects to create novel innovations which advance the fields of information science, engineering, and technology.
“In the past, we’ve done these ‘NEXIS-X’ talks at various times throughout the semester, but this year we wanted to try something different,” explains senior Kyle Rand, student director at the NEXIS lab.
“By pairing the series of talks around the time of our usual end-of-semester Future Friday showcase, we can show what our members are doing beyond their projects,” Rand says. “Work that happens in NEXIS doesn’t always occur during class hours, it’s often at night, or in some cases takes place outside of the building, so we wanted to show the campus what we do here, and what our student researchers have worked on, as we build up to the Future Friday event.”
The roughly 20 NEXIS student researchers have been working independently on projects throughout the semester, and use the end-of-semester showcases to display their work to the campus community.
The four talks, one held each day from May 1-4, will explore areas that go beyond the student members’ research projects.
“We wanted to show what we’re doing beyond the projects, as lot of the student research diverges from the final projects, it is ancillary in some cases to what they’re working on,” Rand says.
(all talks take place in the ICE Box on the 2nd floor of Hinds Hall)
Monday, May 1 – 2 p.m.
Media Validity and Perception
Esmeralda Murray
Tuesday, May 2 – noon
Build Your Own Computer
Kevin Spector
Wednesday, May 3 – 1 p.m.
Virtual Reality Game Development
Adrian Hatch
Thursday, May 4 – 3:30 p.m.
Arduino Programming
Kalia Barrow
The week of NEXIS events culminates on Friday, May 5, with the Future Friday showcase. Projects will be on display in the ICE Box on the 2nd floor of Hinds Hall from Noon to 3 p.m., and NEXIS students will be available for demonstrations and to answer questions about their research. Refreshments will be provided.
NEXIS is currently accepting applications for new student participants for the 2017-2018 academic year. The lab is open to any student at Syracuse University with an interest in exploring topics in the information technology field.
“We don’t require that students have a specific research topic or project in mind, but we do ask that they have ideas of projects that they might be interested in,” says Rand. “And we don’t look for lot of technical background necessarily, as we encourage learning here.
“Someone who is here at the University, willing to learn, willing to put in the hours to create something innovative – not for the sake of doing but for the sake of learning beyond the classroom–would do well here,” Rand continued. “We offer students hands-on experiences they can’t always get in the classroom–we encourage actually doing something, not just discussing it.”
The NEXIS application is available online, and questions can be directed to Kyle Rand at kbrand@syr.edu.
