Two Queen’s students are competing in a national video competition to highlight their research.

Yuliya Nesterova and Sterling Mitchell are among 40 students from across Canada competing in NSERC’s Science, Action contest, with the aim of getting Canadians excited about science and engineering research through one-minute online videos highlighting their own work.

The 25 most-viewed videos as of Tuesday, Feb. 28 will move on to the finals where they will be judged by a panel.  A total of 15 cash prizes will be handed out, including the top prize of $3,500.

A master’s student in algebraic geometry, Ms. Nesterova took an animated approach for her video Lives Of Shapes in Space which describes how she is testing a beta invariant to try and understand its convexity.

To make the video, Ms. Nesterova spent three months drawing the images and then taught herself how to use an open-source animation program.

It has been a beneficial learning experience, she says.

“(The project) made me learn more math. There were two things that didn't end up getting animated that took a week of problem-solving and researching to try and get right, work out how the shapes would look,” she says. “And then it was too difficult to animate, so it got tossed out. But you're always learning something about your topic from unexpected sources.”

In his video Mistaken Point, Mr. Mitchell, a third-year geological engineering student, introduces viewers to the work by Guy Narbonne (Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering) and his research team at the recently-designated UNESCO World Heritage site in Newfoundland.

In making the video, Mr. Mitchell utilized some of the skills he has developed through working at Studio Q.

“As a geological engineer, I believe Dr. Narbonne’s research gives us fascinating insight into the history of our world,” he says. “As Mistaken Point was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage site, I thought it would be a great time to highlight his research.”