This post was written by Hatchet staff writer Jacqueline Thomsen.

More than 150 students pitched their research ideas, ranging from the effect of listening to music on memorization to the nationalization of local political campaigns, to top administrators and companies this week.

Surrounded by big posters of data and diagrams, students showed off their months-long research projects at the annual exhibition Tuesday and Wednesday in the Marvin Center.

Vendors from more than 30 technology companies lined up inside each presentation room, many looking to offer potential partnerships to student researchers.

Andrea Phillippe, an outreach coordinator for the the Office of the Vice President for Research, said students who practice presenting their research on campus will be more comfortable in front of bigger audiences, such as national conferences where there are hundreds of researchers, foundations and companies.

“If you’re going to continue on in any research field poster presentations are very much typical so this is great exposure,” she said. “This is experience in a non-threatening environment where it’s your peers, it’s your faculty members.”

Senior Hillary Hecht, a double major in dance and organizational sciences, placed first in a psychology division for her study looking at how dancers apply networking skills in their careers.

“The experience of doing research and thinking in such a strategic way has been a very different aspect to the information and learning I’ve been doing in the classroom,” Hecht said.

Hecht, who worked with Nils Olsen, an assistant professor of organizational sciences, will present her work at a conference in San Francisco next month held by the Association for Psychological Science.

Brian Dumbacher, a third year graduate statistics student, combined his full-time job at the U.S.Census Bureau with his studies to estimate the results of a survey on public employment and payroll in D.C.

“This research is part of my overall dissertation research,” he said. “I thought it would be a good idea for me to help organize my thoughts and meet people with similar interests.”

Dumbacher also said that it was an opportunity to improve his communication skills and present his work to those who normally wouldn’t be exposed to statistics research.