Organizer: Leslie Martinich (Competitive Focus, Inc.)
The purpose of this workshop is to enhance your capacity to lead technology organizations effectively. Why are some leaders better and more successful than others? One reason involves their ability to communicate with others in the moment, to be mindful and respond to what is happening right now. We borrow techniques from improv to help you learn to better communicate with others.
Improv requires skill, preparation and practice to be able to listen, act and react in the moment. This improv workshop prepares both individual contributors and leaders how to react, adapt and communicate honestly with others. We use real world examples and cases to make this workshop immediately applicable to your workplace.
You will learn how to listen, ask questions to learn more about your boss or subordinate’s goals, objectives and interests, and to respond in ways that improve understanding and cooperation. The word “improv” brings to mind improv comedy and laughter. While this class is serious business, the workshop is engaging and entertaining while you learn.
In this highly participative class, we use case studies and real-world scenarios from the tech industry, which provide you the opportunity to learn new techniques and put them to immediate use.
Moderator: Todd Austin (Univ. of Michigan)
Panelists:
The panel will be organized as 5-minute intro of each speaker (if possible without ppt), and then discussion on the challenges that early career faculty face, and how senior faculty see the journey, and what advices they can give. What are the best ways to navigate some of the political, academic, and even interpersonal issues at work. More than advices, what are the right ways to look at the various issues would be very valuable. Lessons learnt by both senior and junior faculty will also be very insightful.
Moderator: Vijaykrishnan Narayanan (Penn State Univ.)
Panelists:
The panel will discuss how conferences and journals can bring more value to the industry and academia alike. Our panel of editors will discuss many areas like special issues, conference panels, tutorials and magazines. What constitutes an emerging topic panel, what makes good topic for special issues, building attractive tutorials and roles & responsibilities for a guest editor. Addressing such key topics and emerging areas not only helps academia appreciate the industry perspective, but is an effective tool to attract new talent to your organization. Panelists will provide examples of how better industry/academia cooperation can lead to rapid development of technology.
Moderator: Valeria Bertacco (Univ. of Michigan)
Panelists:
This session will include presentations followed by panel discussions with program managers from different funding agencies. Presentations and discussions will revolve around topics related to navigating the academic funding landscape, aiming to answer questions such as: What are current and upcoming funding opportunities in different agencies? How to prepare a successful research proposal, and what are the key requirements? How to best engage with program managers on research proposals, and how to get involved in as volunteer for the proposal review process?
Moderator: Leon Stok (IBM)
Panelists:
This panel will comprise of a mix of senior industry professionals that are managing academic research, and some academic researchers who are involved in collaborative research with the industry. The panel will discuss the challenges of aligning industry projects with academic research from both sides of the aisle, the industry side, as well as the academic side.