IEEE FOOTHILL STUDENTS—-RISING STAR CONFERENCE—JANUARY 2-4—LAS VEGAS
| January 16, 2017 | Posted by Frank Gomez under CN, COMSOC, CS, General, MTT/APS, Student Activities |
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A large contingent of IEEE Foothill section students attended the Region 6 IEEE “Rising Stars 2017” held at the Excaliber Hotel Las Vegas NV from January 2-4, 2017. It was a successful trip for all the student attendees. Here are parts of their student assignment reports on what they saw and learned at this conference; part technical conference, part professional, and 100% social.
UC RIVERSIDE STUDENTS READY FOR CONFERENCE TO START
…We met other undergraduates from all over Region 6, some people coming from as far away as Washington and Idaho. We received great technical presentations from industry professionals from Intel and SoCal Edison. There were great talks on cyber security, virtual reality and the internet of things.
MANUFACTURING IN SPACE—ZERO G VERSUS ONE G ENVIRONMENT—MAKES A DIFFERENCE
…opportunity to talk and get to know both industry professionals and students just like me. The professionals gave us insight on the new innovations and that are in store for the future and helped us prepare for the competitive search for a job.
….My two favorite events where the pitch competition and the panel of professional engineers. In the pitch competition, I got to develop my public speaking and presentation skills.
…. I learned how other students are practicing their skills outside of the classroom from artificial intelligence to robotics.
Ms Jasmine Moreno of UCR describes her experiences at the “PITCH” presentation contest:
The rules (of the “PITCH” project) were to “pitch (present) a project — say you want to work on a cool extracurricular project, either for a hackathon, capstone, or simply for fun. This (aim of this) kind of pitch is to attract your fellow IEEE Student Members as talent to help you get the project moving.”
(Without a doubt several of the Rising Stars 2017 committee have read the first chapter of Mark Twain’s classic, “Tom Sawyer” or an equivalent classic. Spread the work around until…..)
It was an oral and video pitch. For some reason at the conference, they were having a hard time playing the sound to my video. I gave my pitch again orally while they fixed the solution. (Not a problem for me; no stage fright.) My subject was a technical pitch about a Distress Response Drone. This is my senior design project. You can find my video at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBzvIyUSpK4. I came up with this idea with my team in October and I made the video in November.
Guess what? I won best video pitch! I was awarded $500 which I plan to use on my project.
PS: Ms Jasmine, when are you taking your “Distress Response Drone Team” out to Starbucks for a treat?
I truly enjoyed the guest speakers, especially the talk from Erna Grasz about Humanitarian Technology. I resonated with her ideals and found her very inspiring.
HUMANITARIAN TECHNOLOGY–ASANTE AFRICA FOUNDATION–MS E GRASZ
There were great company representatives from companies such as vivint, hyperloop one, Bentley, NBC, and many more. The lectures and workshops were educational and mostly valuable some felt very broad, but given the time frame and the varied audience this is understandable. The location was great and the food was phenomenal.
My favorite workshop … was the Entrepreneur workshop in which the speaker was highly engaging and helped us feel confident to pursue a startup company if we had our “why.” I enjoyed both lectures on Bentley’s new Real World Capture system and Hyperloop One’s functional electromagnetic bullet train. But the best talk by far was the final pane lin which established engineers inspired us incoming engineers to have the confidence to succeed and overcome social issues that can hold us back and to learn from our failures.
SPEAKER FROM BENTLEY SYSTEMS EXPLAINS HOW TO GO FROM A PICTURE TO 3-D SOFTWARE
…..The inspirational speakers were amazing… very professional … very excited totalk about what they did and how they can help us become better. One of the example is Jeremy Warren, CTO of Vivint. His talk was about understanding the internet ofthings and how it is growing.
HERE IS WHERE THE IEEE COMES INTO YOUR CAREER PLANNING
……Chris McManes, the Public Relations Manager of IEEE USA, Spoke briefly about SPAx, an IEEE Program that assists student branches to improve IEEE student Member’s non-technical skills. The Computer Society breakout panel helped with understanding of the organizational structure (down)to the local level, and some expected trends in Region 6.
…helped to identify to prospective members the benefits of IEEE Society memberships(including scholarships) and mentorship. Young professionals panel…described the value of professional networking and the volunteer experience….facilitate professional development and networking ina manner that is not directly related to school and work…opportunity to relax and enjoy while networking (like this Rising Stars 2017 meeting, for example).
…….We also got to socialize with other students from different universities and colleges as well, some whom came from as far away as University of Washington. My favorite part about the Rising Stars Conference is that we get to choose from a variety of tech talks that suites our interests.
DR JAMES DORRIS, DIRECTOR OF ELECTROMAGNETIC ACTIVITY AT HYPERLOOP ONE
…..The keynote speak about the Hyperloop One company was memorable because I have heard about speed trains from Los Angeles to San Francisco since I was in middle school. Hyperloop was recruiting students as well so I was able to network with a recruiter and a powersystems engineer. I was fortunate enough to win a raffle to see the Hyperloop test site in the Mojave Desert just outside of Las Vegas. The test site had a 300 meter track that experienced speeds of up to 2000 km/hr. I was able to speak to the engineering director and ask him all sorts of questions. This conference was not only informative but also inspiring, a perfect end to winter break!
ARE YOU READY FOR A HYPERLOOP TRIP???? BRING YOUR VIRTUAL REALITY GEAR
We thank all our IEEE Foothill Students who attended, and who provided some notes on their participation at this meeting: Genaro Gonzalez (California Baptist University);Sean Hamilton, Aaron Tsang, Carlos Zepeda, Beverly Abadines, John Paul Abadines, Maria Hernandez (California State University, San Bernardino); and Cody Simons, Peter Hung, Jose Antonio Mendez, John Pham, Jasmine Moreno, Jessica Fu, Daniel Garcia, Noelle Parker, Daniel Medaris, Kevin Hsieh, Sirina Nabhan (University of California Riverside). Alberto Tam Yong (UC Riverside) helped with conference organizing.
AMAZING SPEAKERS–GOOD FOOD—RESUME REVIEW AND CRITIQUES-GREAT FUN- NETWORKING ACROSS IEEE REGION 6