The C3SR hosted its inaugural Open House Event at ECE Building’s Lobby on Sept 28 from 11 - 2 PM.
C3SR students prepared more than 18 posters on a wide range of AI research topics currently going on at the center. We also had a live demo on deep neuron network based object detection running on an FPGA platform. The event was a huge success with many students and faculty stopped by at the posters, learned about the center’s AI research, and discussed potential collaborations and engagement with the center.
We also hosted an info session on C3SR during noon in Room 3002 at the ECE Building. C3SR Co-directors
and faculty members,
Prof. Kevin Chang,
Prof. Deming Chen,
Prof. Rakesh Nagi,
Prof. Prof. Lav Varshney,
Prof. Sanjay Patel,
Prof. Andrew Miller, and
Prof. Minh Do
along with more than 20 C3SR graduate
students were all present at the information session.
Many students(especially undergrad students) stayed through the entire one-hour info session before they even felt hungry for the greatest pizza in town (what an amazing crowd!).
The info session was kicked off by the center Co-Director Prof. Wen-mei Hwu. He first gave a historical perspective on the adoption of AI for business, how the center was formed with the stronger leadership support from both IBM and ILLINOIS, and what the center’s research agenda is.
The center’s Co-Director Dr. Jinjun Xiong (who’s also an Adjunt Research Professor with ECE) then shared with the students about some sample research accomplishements achieved by the center’s students and faculty in the past two years. Xiong then went on discuss various benefits a C3SR student can gain and ways a prospective student can get involved with the center.
A pinnacle moment of the info session is the launch of a new initiative this year led by C3SR faculty Prof. Sanjay Patel. The program is called Alchemy, a three-year like program that aims to train and build a pipeline of student-teams that work on deep technology problems and be known to the world for their expertise in X for whatever that domain is. The end goal is to have the teams to be acquihired with a successful return-on-investment.
The info-session ended with a lot of great questions from students and great interests in learning more about C3SR. For those students who registered for this Open House event beforehand, they were happily surprised to receive a special COOLEST C3SR T-shirt as a present from C3SR.
Last but not the least. Interested students can send a copy of their CV with research interests to c3sr.apply@gmail.com forapplication. We look forward to seeing you soon. Yes, we’re going to have our next Open House sometime soon. Please stay tuned.
