Networking
Networking is an important skill. This session addresses the skills that are needed for networking, a very important component of your professional life. The topics include strategies for finding a community, meeting people in the field, and promoting your research and yourself: the elevator pitch. This session will also address what you should prepare for, learn, and what to do when you attend conferences, workshops, or any technical meeting, including meeting researchers visiting your department.
Panelists:
Colleen M. Lewis
Associate Professor
Colleen Lewis is an Associate Professor of computer science (CS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Lewis was previously the McGregor-Girand Associate Professor of CS at Harvey Mudd College. At the University of California, Berkeley, Lewis completed a PhD in science and mathematics education, an MS in computer science, and a BS in electrical engineering and computer science. Her research seeks to identify and remove barriers to CS learning and understand and optimize CS learning. Lewis curates CSTeachingTips.org, a NSF-sponsored project for disseminating effective CS teaching practices. Lewis has received the NSF CAREER Award, the NCWIT.org Undergraduate Mentoring Award and the AnitaB.org Emerging Leader Award for her efforts to broaden participation in computing.
Eshwar Chandrasekharan
Assistant Professor
Eshwar Chandrasekharan is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research builds a foundation for evaluating and improving approaches to online moderation, and developing new AI-backed sociotechnical systems. Dr. Chandrasekharan's work has appeared at high-impact conferences venues (including a Best Paper award at CSCW 2023), and received considerable press coverage—e.g., The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, The Verge and MotherBoard. He won a Facebook research award for his project on measuring healthy online behavior. Professor Chandrasekharan has worked with large-scale Internet platforms including Twitter, Reddit and Facebook, and his research has impacted their efforts to improve online governance. For example, he developed Crossmod, a new AI-backed moderation system that is currently deployed in an online community with over 14 million subscribers. His research led Reddit to ban many hate groups (e.g., neo-Nazis) from the platform. Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO and co-founder, also used Dr. Chandrasekharan's work as evidence in a testimony before Congress. Professor Chandrasekharan holds a B.Tech and M.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Zoom Recording
