Quest is a much-anticipated day for Oswego State students every year. Those who are presenting look forward to sharing their hard work with the college community and for those who are not presenting, the day is filled with sleeping in, catching up on homework, binge-watching Netflix, hanging out with friends or drinking the day away.
Quest provides students from all different departments the opportunity to share what they love and get experience presenting in front of an audience. Matthew Doyle, Naomi Castillo-Lugo, Kate Baile and Vincent Debiase are among many that will be presenting at this year’s Quest.
Doyle is a graduate human-computer interaction student. He will be graduating with his master’s degree in May 2016.
Doyle’s presentation is about using robots to make Mars an inhabitable planet for humans, a concept known as terraforming. This would be done through telepresence, meaning humans living on Earth would control the robots.
“I think it’s really important that we start thinking about these things,” Doyle said. “I love space and I enjoy trying to conceptualize large problems into smaller ones that may be more manageable with our current technologies.”
Doyle has been researching this topic on his own since September. Although he has presented at Quest twice before, once as an undergraduate student and another time as a graduate student, Doyle is excited to finally present a project that is all his own.
“I think what I will be presenting this year is incredibly important, so I hope to spark the interest of someone so that they can maybe continue this work after I graduate,” Doyle said.
To ensure that he is prepared for his final Quest presentation, Doyle said he plans to go over his research with his advisor and by himself. He does not like to use note cards during presentations, so he prepares by rehearsing what he is going to say a few days in advance.
“I am very excited, this will be my last [Quest presentation] since I am graduating and I personally feel this is my best work,” Doyle said. “I enjoy the Quest symposium very much and I think it’s a great opportunity for students to showcase their work.”
Castillo-Lugo is a senior with a double major in sociology and Spanish. She will be presenting a Spanish poem along with three of her classmates for her Spanish senior seminar class, which focuses on Paraguayan culture.
Castillo-Lugo and her classmates will be reading the poem “La Historia Empieza en Altos,” which means “History Begins in Altos” in English, from the book “Poemas y Canciones / Poems and Songs” by Juan Manuel Marcos. According to Castillo-Lugo, the poem is about a war in Paraguay.
“[The poem] is about a guy and his role in the war and how his goal was to end the war and fight for the people and encourage people to fight for themselves because he wanted Paraguay to be a free nation,” Castillo-Lugo said.
They will recite the poem, in both English and Spanish, explain what the poem means, the history surrounding the poem and also share the Paraguayan national anthem and explain how that is relevant to the poem as well.
Castillo-Lugo and her group have been preparing for their presentation for about a week. According to Castillo-Lugo, the presentation will only take around ten minutes.
“Surprisingly, Oswego has gotten me used to presentations,” she said. “Sociology and Spanish require a lot of presentations so I’m pretty used to speaking in front of people.”
Baile is a senior chemistry student who is presenting at Quest as part of her senior capstone research requirement.
She has been working closely with chemistry professor Shokouh Haddadi and her research partners Nate Stemmler and Siera Plemnik on analyzing components in latent fingerprints, which are fingerprints that are not visible to the naked eye. The group has been working together since the fall of 2015.
The University of Albany came up with a system that was 99 percent accurate in determining whether a fingerprint was left by a male or a female. However, the process the University of Albany came up with was very complex and could only be done with a print left on a piece of paper.
“In reality, a criminal isn’t going to leave you a finger print on a piece of paper,” Baile said. “They’re going to leave it on a door or a glass surface.”
Baile and her group is working on a way to make this process simpler and more practical so that police officers would be able to use it. They hope to be able to come up with a kit that law enforcement could utilize at crime scenes.
Baile took part in the poster presentations at Quest last year. She is excited to have the opportunity to be able to do a formal presentation and talk about her research.
“I don’t mind presenting at all,” Baile said. “I actually kind of like it. It’s just natural to me.”
Debiase is a junior with a double major in physics and applied mathematics.

He will be doing two group presentations, one on nanomaterial batteries and the other on thin film semi-conductors.
Debiase’s first presentation on nanomaterial batteries focuses on the production of those batteries from start to finish. He and his group will discuss the steps necessary to produce a nanomaterial battery, starting with the synthesis of nanoparticles, depositing those particles onto electrodes, producing the battery and finally testing the quality of the battery.
His other presentation will be on the use and production of thin film semi-conductors, which demonstrates how to turn polymers, which are typically insulators, into semiconductors by coating them with organic materials, such as nanoparticles.
“I got involved by just being generally interested in the research aspect of physics,” Debiase said. “I would like to think that I could be the reason there is an advancement in the field of physics.”
Debiase has been researching both of these projects since the beginning of the semester. To prepare for his Quest presentation, he plans on looking over his research notes and rehearsing more than he did when he presented at Quest last year.
“I expect everything to go great, hopefully [get] some good questions in the audience and no one falling asleep,” Debiase said. “I am excited to present. It’s awesome to show other people all the hard work that I’ve been doing this semester and how well it’s paid off.”
Quest will take place Wednesday, April 13 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The majority of presentations and activities will be held in the Marano Campus Center and the Shineman Center. Presentations are open to everyone.