Welcome to HCURA!
This has been a pivotal year for us as an organization. We were founded in 2007 upon the mission of building an interdisciplinary research community among Harvard undergraduates. This goal remains unchanged and we are thrilled with how the undergraduate research community has mushroomed in the past few years. This trend has not gone unnoticed; in 2010, Harvard established the Harvard Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives (OURI) as an organization dedicated to connecting students with the many available research opportunities.
As undergraduate research continues to progress, the HCURA board now seeks to expand our vision of building an interdisciplinary research community beyond Harvard. Since our founding, HCURA has been dedicated to providing a platform for student researchers to share their work. To this end, we have hosted the Harvard Undergraduate Research Symposium (HURS) every year as an opportunity for Harvard undergraduates to dialogue with each other and with faculty. Our work with HURS has impressed upon us the value of such events, leading us to organize the first Boston Undergraduate Research Symposium (BURS) in 2009.
The National Collegiate Research Conference (NCRC) is a continuation of our vision to provide the best platform for undergraduates from across the nation to share their research. As a result of our experience executing conferences in the past, we believe that this year is the time for us to move forward with NCRC. We have the support of a number of Harvard departments and offices as well as established connections with renowned faculty. Our distinguished speakers at NCRC 2011 will include Dudley Herschbach, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and Melissa Franklin, the Head of the Department of Physics here at Harvard.
For more information, check out the NCRC 2012 brochure. We hope to see you at our inaugural conference!
All the best,
Tony Shen and Janet Song
2011 HCURA Co-Presidents
