The Sustainability Research and Career Symposium showcases a spectrum of graduate and faculty research surrounding sustainability. This year’s event takes place March 15, 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m., in the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability.

UBC Sustainability Ambassadors have been busy the past month putting together the event. Vincent Chiu shares a preview of what students can expect.

What’s new at this year’s symposium?

We’re bringing in more presenters with diverse backgrounds, such as urban design, public health, sociology and commerce. We’ve also been looking into including a Pecha Kucha session like last year. You’re given 20 seconds per slide and then five or six minutes to present. It’s a really quick run-through. We’re integrating a lot of the presentations throughout to keep it fast paced and engaging.

Why should someone present?

It’s an opportunity to expand one’s sustainability research network. We want to bring people together and hopefully identify new collaboration opportunities — have engineers collaborate with psychologists, psychologists collaborate with marketing students or geography students working with land and food systems students.

Why should students come out?

As an undergraduate student passionate about sustainability and research, I’ve found it tough to figure out what exactly your research can encompass. A lot of disciplines are trying to address it through their own lenses. The symposium offers a starting point to give people a sense of how sustainability applies to engineering, for example, or psychology. We’re showing people the different perspectives and approaches.

We want undergraduate students to look at their own research and figure out how they can apply sustainability. We also want graduate students to get to know each other, to network and to share their research. And we want professors to see the students on campus and create connections.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about sustainability while being a Sustainability Ambassador?

 Sustainability isn’t so much an infrastructure issue as it is a communication issue. We’ve had science telling us about climate change for decades. We have technology for proper sustainable engineering, but it can be tough to communicate sustainability and make it a priority. When we host an event, for example, if we take just a few hours, we can implement zero-waste lunches. It’s about consideration.

This interview has been edited and condensed.