For engineers to have successful careers as researchers, either in academia or industry, they need more than just skills in the laboratory. Almost as important is the ability to effectively, even compellingly, explain their work and why it matters.
To help its graduate students develop this skill, the Cullen College’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering recently hosted its annual Graduate Research Conference. The gathering was sponsored by Applied Optoelectronics, Omron, Standby Energy Inc., the University of Houston's Texas Learning & Computational Center and ECE Professor Jack Wolfe.
Rough 220 people attended the conference, which featured oral presentations from 14 students and poster presentations from another 28.
Three of these students were honored for giving outstanding presentations at the gathering. Susmi Das received the Urvish Medh Memorial Award for the best overall presentation, “Biomems for Growth of Endothelial Cells and Langerhans Islets for Transplants in Diabetes I.” Muffadal Gheewala won the Best Oral Presentation Award for his talk, “Fabrication of 3D Multisensing Optrodes for In Vivo Neuronal Unit Recordings.” The award for best poster presentation went to Babak Noory for his poster “Object Vs. Motion-Segmentation Based Reference Frames in Motion Perception.”
While these and all the other presenters gained from the opportunity to publicly discuss their work, the GRC offered them an additional benefit: the chance to learn about the work of other researchers and set the stage for future collaboration.
“This type of two-way communication is vital for budding research and development careers,” said Badri Roysam, department chair. “Some of the most exciting contemporary research projects are occurring at the confluence of two or more disciplines.”