Program Details

Topic 1: Academia vs Industry, two separated worlds or room for opportunities and common challenges?

Moderator: Javier Picorel, Huawei Technologies

Speakers:

• Rosario Cammarota, Intel
• Zhuo Li Cadence
• Ramesh Karri, NYU
• Jinjun Xiong, IBM

Since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, university-industry partnerships have been limited to transaction-based partnership models through Technology Transfer Offices. However, such model does not lead to groundbreaking innovation on the corporate side, neither do they lead to interesting revenues for universities. In recent years, universities have been investing in increasing research based startups, while industry is realizing the potential for academic centers to fill their need for applied research. These new approaches from both sides open critical rooms for opportunities and new challenges that will be explored and discussed in this section. This session will provide examples of innovative collaborations models together with strategies to minimize critical factors such as different incentive systems or project development timing.

Topic 2: How to fund your research?

Moderator: Javier Picorel, Huawei Technologies

Speakers:

• Yiran Chen, Duke University
• Jie Gu, Northwestern University
• Houman Homayoun, George Mason University
• Yiyu Shi, University of Notre Dame

Are you seeking funding to support you research? Are you tired of writing proposals without getting accepted? Are you trying to get funding to do research or do research to get funding? This session will provide interesting views on these topics, bringing together researchers and industry from all over the world for a wide ranging discussion. This section also provides the chance of getting in touch with people who succeed in getting their research funded, as well as discusses how to write a successful proposal directly with the evaluators from both national program and private companies.

Topic 3: How to build an impactful research group?

Moderator: Jinjun Xiong, IBM

Speakers:

• Mohammad Abdullah AL Faruque, UC Irvine
• Samira Khan, University of Virginia
• Onur Mutlu, ETH Zurich
• David Pan, UT Austin

In 1992, Bland & Ruffin summarized the literature on the factors associated with research productivity and identified twelve factors that were consistent across definitions of ‘productivity’ and time. Are you facing the challenge of finding a balance between the need of increasing the number of published paper and their impact? This session will go through some of the factors that could help in balancing this two important points, such as how to clarify goals and objectives exploiting open communication, good group climate and participative governance. Other important factors to be considered are age, size and diversity in your group and good team organization to achieve the objectives set.

Topic 4: The soft skills towards a successful career

Moderator: Chengmo Yang, University of Delaware

Speakers:

• Eli bozorgzadeh, UC Irvine
• Iris Bahar, Brown University
• Vivek De, Intel
• Sharon Hu, University of Notre Dame

Nowadays hard skills are no longer the only characteristic that defines the success of a career path. How can you improve your soft skills? How could you communicate your work in a proficient and impactful way? How will you map goals and plan your activities towards success? This and other related topics will be discussed in this session, where you will have the chance to discover the most valuable soft skills and to get insights on how to apply them towards a successful career.