Poster Competition Application

The scientific poster competition is open to students and fellows enrolled in the School who recently have engaged in a noteworthy scholarly investigation or scientific study during the period of enrollment. Approval from the student's faculty adviser is recommended but not required.

Priority should be given to recent work within the department, including work still in progress, for which the student or fellow has had primary responsibility (i.e., qualifies as first author). Thesis research for a master's or doctoral degree at the school is eligible for presentation, either as a report on work in progress or as a final report. For completed work (e.g., a thesis already defended), the date of completion of the investigation or study should be no greater than 18 months prior to the poster competition. However, all of the School's enrollees are eligible for selection by the department for this competition, including special, limited, and part-time students, and postdoctoral and visiting fellows.

Alumni participants may be selected by the departments, provided the work was initiated or completed while they were enrolled as students or fellows during the 18 months prior to the competition.

The student submitting must be the first author.

The student should prepare a short statement indicating the scope of the scientific work he or she did in preparation of this poster.

Please note that applicants may only submit one poster to the competition. 

Abstracts should be no more than 314 words and should consist of text only (no graphics). A structured abstract, with section headers, is acceptable but not required. All authors and their affiliations should be listed. Please provide the abstract as a Word document or PDF, single-spaced, Arial 11pt font.

The poster display for the Delta Omega Scientific Poster session may be drawn up in any standard format that is acceptable for presentation at an annual meeting of another scientific or professional society such as the American Public Health Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or the Society for Epidemiologic Research. We would be pleased to know that the poster has been used or will be used in another venue, and we encourage the participant to prepare the poster so that it can be used elsewhere, rather than simply for this competition.

Each participant's entire poster display, including all panels and materials, must fit a rectangular display board that is constructed to be 60 inches tall and 35 inches wide. The poster material can be mounted on these display boards using thumbtacks, which the participant should bring along with the poster materials. The participant is responsible for making sure that the poster display fits on the display board, and is completely responsible for attaching the individual elements to the display board according to our instructions.

The poster display should include:

• Title panel, with title of the study
• Author(s)
• Departmental affiliation

This title panel may be in banner format across the top of the display or in an 8 ½ x 11 format in the upper right-hand corner. Collaborators other than the first author whose work is represented should be indicated by a footnote in the title panel.

The Welch Library reference collection has books with general instructions and helpful hints for participants who are unfamiliar with preparation of poster displays at scientific meetings.

A panel of judges will review the poster presentations. The judges will be selected by Chapter officers from among current members of the University faculty, distinguished visiting faculty currently in residence at the School, and distinguished alumni who have been elected for membership in the Delta Omega Society.

Each judge will rate each entry on a 100-point scale. The final ranking of entries will be based upon the mean of the resulting distribution of scores.

Provided that there are sufficient entrants in each category, poster displays will be grouped into one of three categories, each eligible for cash prizes:

1. Laboratory Research
2. Applied Research
3. Policy & Practice

All participants will receive a certificate of merit that acknowledges that they were selected to represent their home departments in this scientific poster competition. The participant with the best judges' score in each of the three categories will receive a check from the Delta Omega Society Alpha Chapter fund in the amount of $500. The second- and third-place winners, in each of the categories, will receive checks for $300 and $200 respectively. The Society reserves the right to recognize additional participants whose scores were not appreciably different from the third-place score. The overall winner will be supported to travel to present his or her poster at the next APHA conference.

All winners and participants will be recognized publicly at the annual Delta Omega Society induction ceremony. Prizes and certificates for the prize winners and participants will be distributed at that time.

Please e-mail DeltaOmegaAlpha@jhu.edu if you have any questions.