Student Testimonials on Conference experience
Thanks for holding such a wonderful conference.
My blurb on "Did the conference help you in your scientific pursuits? and how?”
Yes, definitely. This is my first conference and it’s so nice to meet researchers outside my field of study such as psychology, cognitive science, and economy etc. They provide me with different views to understand the role of social media mining plays in social computing and behavioral-cultural modeling. Also, thank the keynote speaker and all the researchers involved in panel discussions, their passionate and educative talks and discussions motivate me in all different ways. For example, I am impressed by Dr. Osgood’s advice to young generation – Math, math and more math, concentrate on doing good work and quality will be recognized, or don’t be afraid of turning down opportunities. Besides, I got a lot of invaluable feedback for my current research from researchers in different disciplines. I’m also grateful of the mentor/mentee lunch session, we had the opportunities to ask questions that have been puzzling us for years, such as how to choose your career and what things should be cautious about when starting a start-up. I believe my school life will consistently benefit from all the invaluable advice.
It was a great experience attending the SBP-BRiMS 2018 as one of the graduate consortium members. The research topics being present at this prestigious conference mainly focus on social behavior modeling and analysis. Since my own research is about human-in-the-loop dataset labeling, inference, learning as well as teaching, this conference provided a full opportunity for practice and constructive dialogues.The conference is held in the campus of George Washington University, which is an ideal platform for an earlier discussion of my posting graduation plans. Because it is a nation-wide forum, consist of researchers, company professionals, and academic mentors who are experts both in industry and academia. There are more than one thing that I have learned from my peer students, college professors during the consortium discussion on Friday. We have talked about the proper way of writing grant proposal if we are pursuing a tenure-track faculty position, as well as how to select the students as an advisor. From another perspective, we have talked about that what are the discriminative differences between working as a researcher in university and in industry.
Overall, the discussion results are fruitful, and I have gained a lot of insight regarding how to make professional choices after graduation. I am very much thankful to the SBP-BRiMS Doctoral Consortium committee to award me with such a great opportunity to present my work and to discuss with other experienced mentors. I feel much honored to become part of this conference.
The following are the three different ways the conference helped me in my scientific pursuits:
Also, at the social end, the conference gave me an opportunity to meet other fellow researchers in the community.
SBP-BRiMS 2018 was my first conference where I had the opportunity to present my work in front of renowned researchers. My paper was well received and all the feedback was very positive. I also had the opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with some of the best people in the field of social computing. The conference helped me tremendously. I also interacted with fellow researchers who are much focused in their work and are doing very well. This helps me a lot in my scientific journey when I meet fellow PhD students, who are doing exceptional work, and share knowledge. Starting from the first day with the tutorials until the last day, I tried to become a sponge and gather as much knowledge as I could. It was overwhelming but I realized that the competition is real and I need to keep working harder in order to make it to the top. Also, it was my first trip to Washington, DC and I truly enjoyed my stay. This conference has motivated me to submit again next year and be able present my work to a bigger audience.