Being at Caltech is great due to the school’s excellent academics and research opportunities, and some of the other perks include getting to travel to different cities for conferences! In April 2025, I had the chance to visit Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to attend the National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR). At the conference, I had the opportunity to present a poster with the research I conducted last summer through my SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) at Florida International University in Miami, FL (more information about my research here!). NCUR is the national version of a conference I previously attended six months prior: (the Southern California Conference of Undergraduate Research, described in my previous blog post here). Visiting Pittsburgh was a really fun experience, as I got to explore the city for the first time, meet new people at the conference, and visit Carnegie Mellon University, where I will be SURFing in summer 2025! The best part about the trip was that it was fully funded through Caltech’s Housner Fund, which supports students in pursuing various scholarly activities. It is accessible to all undergrads, and most students who apply for the funding typically receive it.
Day 1: Traveling (Sunday, April 6, 2025)
The first day of the Pittsburgh trip began quite early; my flight was at 9 am, so I had to leave Caltech at around 6 am (I am, unfortunately, not a morning person). I was traveling with one of my friends, who also was presenting at NCUR. After getting to the airport and boarding our flight, I took a nap, and five hours later, we landed in Pittsburgh!
By the time we got to our hotel, it was already time for dinner (Pittsburgh is on Eastern time, which is three hours ahead of California). The conference and the hotel we were staying at were in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh, and while we thought it would be crowded and lively, the streets were surprisingly empty. I’m not sure if this was because it was a Sunday night or if it was just cold outside. That’s another thing–Pittsburgh was cold! I’m used to the sunny climate of Pasadena and Miami (where I grew up), so the 30° weather was quite chilly for me. After eating dinner, we went back to the hotel room, worked on some psets, and called it a night.
Day 2: Exploring the city + CMU visit (Monday, April 7, 2025)
Monday was technically the first day of the conference, but it was only a day of registration, plenary speakers, and other introductory remarks that began in the evening. Because of this, my friend and I decided to explore Pittsburgh in the morning. We walked from our hotel to a really spacious park, which had a lot of historical buildings and structures. On the way, we also had a chance to go up the famous Duquesne Incline, a railway car built in 1877 that takes people up a steep slope on a hill. From the top, we had a great view of the city, especially Pittsburgh’s iconic yellow bridges and the Ohio River. We also stopped at a couple coffee shops and bakeries, where I had one of the best croissants I’ve ever tasted!
Later that afternoon, I visited the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) – the lab I’ll be working at next summer through SURF! The lab is located in Newell-Simon Hall, a six-story building that contains dozens of robotics labs under CMU’s Robotics Institute. During the summer, I’ll be working on a redesign of the lab’s snake robots, which have been used in the past for search and rescue missions. In fact, these robots were used during the 2017 Mexico earthquake and were even shown on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (where my advisor Dr. Howie Choset also made an appearance!). I got to meet the members of the lab, play around with the snake robots, and plan out my project for the summer. I’m really excited to be working at the Biorobotics Lab with the snake robots (fun fact: snakes were my favorite animal until middle school)!
Pittsburgh was still cold, and I still hadn’t gotten used to the (in my opinion) frigid temperatures. That night, it actually started snowing outside! I was really surprised, since it was already April. I had also never seen snow falling before (as a Floridian), so it was kind of crazy to see flurries (however minimal) falling from the sky.
Day 3: NCUR and Presentations (Tuesday, April 8, 2025)
The third day of our Pittsburgh trip was the day of the conference and our poster presentations. My friend had her poster bright and early at 8:30 am, so we had to check out of our hotel and be at the conference’s convention center at 8 am (unfortunately, this was 5 am California time!). Luckily, our hotel was only a five minute walk from the convention center.
The convention center had a large room with over a hundred students with posters presenting their research in all fields, from biology to engineering to political science to the humanities. Being from Caltech, where research is mostly STEM based, I really enjoyed seeing some of the research done in non-science fields. Some of the most interesting posters included a study on how the Barbie movie’s advertising was the best way to market a movie, understanding human sleep regulation by studying genes in zebrafish, and studying the controls and navigation of drones, just to name a few.
At the conference, many universities from around the country had booths where they explained their programs and academics. We visited dozens of booths (and got a bunch of merch, such as tote bags, pins, and pens), picked up flyers that detailed the school’s academics and departments, and learned about many unique graduate student programs. Overall, the conference was a fulfilling experience, as I had the chance to gain insight into a range of interdisciplinary approaches in undergraduate research across the country, meet other undergraduate researchers, and talk to other universities to hear about their various programs and opportunities.
Later that afternoon was our flight back to Pasadena. This time, I had to do homework on the flight (instead of sleeping). Twelve hours of flying in three days is not for the weak, but it was worth it, as NCUR was a great experience (especially having it being sponsored by Caltech’s Housner Fund)!
