IEEE International Conference for Biomedical and Health Informatics 2017

The experience itself was both incredibly rewarding, as well as extremely humbling. It was an honor to attend a professional conference of this magnitude as a representative of UWB and MIPS Labs, and to be surrounded by some of the worlds greatest minds as a mere undergraduate student. It was very rewarding, through extremely intimidating at first, to present both of my papers in front of such a large and educated crowd. It forced me to step my game up and really put in the work in knowing what my project was about to the deepest of technical details, as well as how I could present it in a crowd friendly manner while maintaining the integrity of the finest of details. I presented a total of 2 posters, and 2 verbal rapid fire presentations covering 2 different papers that were published.

At BHI 2017, I was able to get a first hand glimpse on what exists at the forefront of biomedical research through the work of the some the most brilliant minds from around the world. It gave me direction in terms of the work I would like to pursue for my Masters and PHD in the near future. I was able to interact and network on a personal level with these professors for potential opportunities to continue my education and research at their facilities. I was proud to claim that I was a student at the UWB, and it felt good to see our logo amongst some of the top schools from around the world.

I would advise students interested in similar opportunities to really put the time and effort in knowing their work inside and out, and to be ready for the types of questions designed to show weakness in their knowledge. Also, attention to detail and an efficiency of words in both oral and poster presentations is extremely necessary, Find the balance of technical language as well as audience friendly presentations techniques in terms of body language, tone of voice, etc.

I will be relaying all the things that I have learned, both technically as well as generally, back to my research mentor Dr. Sohini Roychowdhury and research partners to ensure that we are up to date on the worlds technologies as well as looking at ways in which we can apply the things I learned to our work.