October 28, 2021
LC Students Win Award!
Open gallery
LC STUDENTS WIN AWARD FOR EARTHQUAKE EDUCATION RESEARCH
A team of Lewis & Clark undergraduate researchers won the Best Student Poster competition at CCSC-NW, a regional computer science conference. The poster, “Rehearsing Disaster: Understanding Earthquake Preparedness in an Interactive Environment,” is part of a multi-year, National Science Foundation funded project exploring earthquake education. The interdisciplinary project explores video games as tools for teaching citizens to prepare for, survive, and thrive in the aftermath of a major earthquake, such as those that arise from the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of the Pacific Northwest.
The student authors for the paper are Altaf Barelvi ’23, Shohrukh Jalolov ’21, Sylvia Kunz ’23, Jensen Kraus ’21, Ross Miyabuchi ’21, Skye Russ ’23, Sarah Wood ’22, and Isaiah Nduku, who tragically passed away shortly after starting work on the project. Principal investigators for the project are Associate Professor of Geological Science Liz Safran, Associate Professor of Computer Science Peter Drake, Associate Professor of Psychology Erik Nilsen, and Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies Bryan Sebok.
Miyabuchi presented the poster at the conference, which was also attended by Drake and Computer Science Lecturer Alain Kägi. To help reduce carbon emissions, the three computer scientists traveled to Lacey, Washington by train.
“I thank those that convinced me to go,” said Miyabuchi. “It was here that I found out I enjoy public speaking.”
Students working on the project are involved in both creating the games and using them in psychological experiments to test their effectiveness.
