The symposium, which is open to the WUSTL community, provides graduate students with an opportunity to present their work to a broad audience of diverse academic backgrounds.

The ability to explain one's work to a variety of people outside a particular field of expertise is vital to any career.

The symposium provides students with the ideal opportunity to practice and polish communication skills.

"I hope this event will help graduate students to get to the crux of the problems that they are working on and successfully explain those problems to others in a simplified way without the associated subject-specific jargons," said Shrinivas Venkataraman, co-chair of the Graduate Research Symposium Committee, along with fellow graduate student Suzanne Pritzker. "Multidisciplinary has become the buzzword, and it can be achieved only if a researcher can make others understand what he or she is doing."

The event aims to enhance the professional development of graduate students. The first symposium had 19 presenters in three categories. Last year, more than 70 participants presented work in five categories: humanities, engineering, professional degree programs, sciences and social sciences.

The symposium's development has been fostered since its inception by Robert E. Thach, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and Elaine P. Berland, Ph.D., associate dean of the graduate school.

The symposium provides a unique forum for interaction among students and faculty across the University, encouraging graduate students to mingle with other students, to share their experiences and to learn about ongoing research outside of their specific disciplines.

In past years, graduate students from a variety of fields have presented research through posters, computer displays and audio-visual materials.

The presentations are judged by members of the University community, who award three cash prizes in each of the five categories based on students' abilities to present their work to a broad audience.

The symposium is sponsored by the Graduate Student Senate of Arts & Sciences, the Graduate Professional Council, the Association of Graduate Engineering Students and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

For more information, go online to artsci.wustl.edu/~gss/research_symposium/index2006.html.