Abstract
Are you curious about research and wonder what career paths are possible for computing researchers? Would you like to know how to prepare yourself so you can be a competitive applicant? Are you interested in getting involved in research now but not sure how to get started? Can you participate in research as an undergraduate? During the academic year or summer? Can you do research on a summer internship? This session will feature panelists who can answer such questions and share their perspective as alums, current students, and faculty.
Speaker Biographies
Nancy AmatoNancy M. Amato is Abel Bliss Professor and Department Head of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on robotic motion planning, computational biology and geometry, and parallel computing. She has graduated 24 PhD and 33 Masters students, and has worked with more than 100 undergraduate and more than 10 high school student researchers. Since 2000, she has Co-Directed the CRA-WP Distributed REU (DREU) program that matches undergraduates from groups underrepresented in computing for a summer research experience with a faculty mentor, typically not at the student's home institution.
Felipe AriasFelipe Felix Arias is a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), working on mobile robot cognition and navigation in Dr. Nancy M. Amato's group. His diverse research experience includes projects at UIUC, where he received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 2019, Stanford, and the University of California Berkeley. Born in Bolivia, Arias champions diversity in STEM and seeks to serve as a resource to the immigrant and Hispanic communities.
José E. MoreiraJosé E. Moreira is a Distinguished Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He received a B.S. degree in physics and B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Sao Paulo. He received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Moreira is a Senior Member of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). Contact him at jmoreira@us.ibm.com.
