Finishing alongside students from other major universities – such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton – a student at Queen’s University was the sole Canadian finalist for a prestigious North American computer research award.
Laura Bartha, a fourth-year biomedical computing student, said she was thrilled to be chosen as one of six finalists for the 2011 Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award.
“I wasn’t having a good day, then I saw the e-mail and I jumped up,” she said. “I didn’t think it would be this big of a deal. But when you see the people you are surrounded with – students from Harvard and Yale – it’s impressive.”
According to her research supervisor, Laura is well-deserving of the award.
“Laura is an exceptionally bright, motivated and productive young medical image analysis researcher. She has the touch and feel for practical biomedical computing,” said Professor Gabor Fichtinger.
Ms Bartha was recognized for her work to improve cancer treatment along with the University’s Percutaneous Surgery Lab .
The student’s work was part of a larger project related to a procedure where remaining cancer cells are destroyed after tumours have been surgically removed. Currently, doctors are essentially blind when using a needle to perform that step of the treatment, but this research hopes to remove that limitation.
Ms Bartha started the project as part of a summer job and it soon developed into her undergrad research project.
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Photo courtesy of the Queen’s University News Centre