Scholars Day 2022

Emily Hampston is a SUNY Brockport senior who won “Best Poster” award at the 2022 Scholars Day event.

In Brockport, Scholars Day is a day where it celebrates the scholarly pursuits and creative activities by the campus community. This event happens annually and allows faculty and students to present their academic work.

“I was presenting my honors thesis at Scholars Day. I had an internship at Arizona State University doing research,” said Hampston. “I got randomly put into group and knew I was going to do some kind of math research and I ended up in a group researching prostate cancer using differential equations to model the treatment.”

Photo of Emily Hampston. Photo by: Michael Tammaro

Hampston explains what the differential equations were.

“Differential equations is a math class that I took to complete my major so it was super interesting to see the applications that they can have. I have never seen such an application before which is what made this such a cool experience. Basically, we used math to represent biological processes to try to make predictions about a patient’s treatment and outlook, which can help future patients,” said Hampston.

Hampston explains more about what exactly was in her poster.

“I talked about what we did over the summer and basically, we made a model out of it. We made pretty good pictures to predict certain hormone levels on a patient and how their body would react,” said Hampston. “It was making an estimate what their tumor growth would look like.”

Dr. Sandford Miller is a mathematics professor who was Hampston’s faculty sponsor. She explains his role in the poster.

“Dr. Miller was the professor who worked with the model with me. I have helped grade his papers for the past two years now and he encouraged me to do this research,” said Hampston. “He’s been checking over my work and working with me from Brockport and being my mentor here that I can meet and talk with about the research.”

Hampston also talks about what the future holds for her after the research is complete.

“We’re in the final stages of drafting a paper. I will be publishing it on a paper that we write and hopefully soon it’ll be out,” said Hampston. “I’m not sure if I will continue working with the group after I finish this paper, but I want to explore other areas and I don’t think this is the area I want to do permanently. I want to find an area I am more passionate about.”

One faculty member that won an award was Dr. Markus Hoffmann. Hoffmann is a chemistry professor who won first place for the “Most Student Involvement” award.

Dr. Markus Hoffmann in his lab. Photo by: Michael Tammaro

“I’ve been at Brockport since 2000. I’m now a part of the chair going through the ranks of being an assistant and associate professor in the Chemistry department,” said Hoffmann.

He explains how he achieved the “Most Student Involvement” award during Scholars Day.

“I took my class and ask them to present a poster. These posters are based on an experiment they did in the laboratory,” said Hoffmann. “The students cycle through our instruments that took four out of six possible experiments. I asked them for one of those four to make a poster of them since they already analyzed their data. There was around ten of my students that presented their posters at Scholar’s Day. I found out that nobody else had more students presenting than I did”.

Dr. Markus Hoffmann and Emily Hampston are two members of the Brockport community that have done a lot of research and created new ideas to be recognized. Their contributions have rewarded them with Scholars Day awards to bring home with them.