Student Poster Competition

The International Water Conference^® (IWC) student poster competition is open to college and university engineering students in the United States and worldwide.

See https://eswp.com/water/overview/ for more details on the conference

The IWC Student Poster Award Display is a valuable opportunity for authors to present specific topics and meet with interested attendees for in-depth discussions and networking. This IWC poster display will be very well attended and a popular feature at this year’s conference. A minimum of one winning poster will be selected.  The winning poster will receive a $500 honorarium award, a travel stipend of up to $500, and complimentary conference registration to attend the IWC, November 9-12, 2025, in Orlando, FL.

Additionally, the top 10 poster authors, including the winner(s), will be invited to present their poster at the IWC.  All selected authors will receive complementary registration. The posters will be in the hall between the technical session rooms and the exhibit hall. In addition, student posters will be setup in the technical session room for the associated session(s), offering students an opportunity to discuss their paper following the technical session.  Nearly 1,000 industrial water engineers, consultants, owners, contractors, and academia regularly attend the IWC.  The poster award and display are a fantastic opportunity for students to network with prospective employers in the water industry. Poster presenters are encouraged to bring their resume and provide their LinkedIn or similar profile on their poster.  Handouts of the poster in paper format are also permitted.

Student posters can fall within one of the IWC Technical Session Topics listed below.  Alternatively, students can create posters based on current graduate or undergraduate research work they are conducting, water treatment, management or reuse studies, or on meaningful co-op/internship experiences/projects they want to share.

Posters must be authored only by students; posters co-authored by faculty advisors are not eligible. Posters will be judged by the IWC Student Outreach Committee.  Student competition posters must be submitted via the upload site no later than September 22, 2025.

Winning entries will be notified by October 3, 2025. Invitations to present posters at the IWC will also be made at this time.  The Student Poster Awards Committee reserves the right to not make an award.

Since 1940, the IWC is presented by the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania (ESWP). Questions may be directed to IWC Conference Manager Dave Teorsky of ESWP, at  d.teorsky@eswp.com.

IWC Technical Session Topic Listing  (https://eswp.com/water/technicalprogram/)

Award Competition Guidelines

The IWC Student Poster Award Display is a valuable opportunity for authors to present specific topics and meet with interested attendees for in-depth discussions and networking. This IWC poster display will be very well attended and a popular feature at this year’s conference. Good planning can make your presentation clear, effective, and rewarding. Designing effective posters requires careful thought and advanced preparation. Posters that are simply a PowerPoint presentation or short manuscript will generally receive low grades from the judges.

The goals in designing a poster should be:

1. To attract attention,
2. To provide a clear overview of the specific project,
3. To provide enough material to explain the research or project without an oral explanation, and
4. To provide enough material to initiate discussion and questions.

Display Format

1. The poster is to be no more than 30” x 40”.
   • Foam Core Board and Mounting Easel will be available at the IWC Registration Desk.
2. Your Poster Title and your Name and University/College should be displayed at the top of the poster with lettering not smaller than 1”.
3. All other text should not be smaller than 0.5”.
4. The preferred font is Arial.

Poster Content

1. Company logos may not appear more than once and cannot exceed 3” x 3”
2. The Poster must not be a commercial/product sales poster. Any poster deemed to be overtly commercial will be disqualified.
3. Simply displaying a printed copy of a paper is not permitted.
4. Use of pictures, graphs, charts or tables is strongly encouraged and recommended. Large blocks of text are discouraged. Use enhancing techniques to emphasize important points such as use of different colors or highlight markers. Keep it simple as Posters should be easily seen from a distance of 3’ – 6’.
5. The poster should be organized in a logical manner i.e. top to bottom or left to right.
6. Suggestions:
   1. Simplicity and clarity are keys to an effective poster.
      1. Avoid overwhelming the poster with too much information. The casual viewer should be able to identify the main messages after a quick look at the poster.
      2. Identify a limited number of messages viewers should take away. The messages should be clear, novel, and important.
   2. The author should consider including the following as appropriate:
      1. Title, poster and paper number, author names, affiliation
      2. Introduction / Objectives
      3. Statistical or Analytical Methods
      4. Summary / Results
      5. Conclusions