The past couple of days were spent in Santa Fe, NM, at DCOSS - a premier conference in sensor networks, my research area. Apart from presenting my paper and poster, I was also here to help my advisor in organizing the conference.
The talk took 20 minutes [the presentation had gone through some 5 revisions in the process], and at the end of it, to my horror, noone asked a question! Obviously, I had failed to connect with the audience. Then the session chair, who is bound by duty to ask a question if the speaker gets none, asked me one I answered it, and suddenly, 5 hands went up in the audience! I was like, where the hell were you guys before?!
Anyways, I answered the questions, and proceeded downstairs for my demo. To my pleasant surprise, both the keynote speakers, Richard Karp and P. R. Kumar, both very big guys in the area, spent some time at my poster/demo, and seemed interested in my work :).
My advisor was also pleased with my performance, and so I figured that it was a good time to talk about my future plans - that of going back to ITBHU as a faculty member.
Once again, surprisingly, he was not the least bit concerned with the "why are you missing out on golden opportunities in the states" argument that I have been given so often by others who know of my plans. He was very supportive, and seemed to appreciate the idea :). The only requirement - do lots of research before you graduate! But hey, isn't that what a PhD is all about?
So, in summary, things are looking up, and tons of more work needs to be done, but I am excited!
-A
P.S. I visited Los Alamos last night and met Zack. We went for a hike, got some freshly made pizza with his girlfriend, and saw "The Matrix" on his home projector. Good times!
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment