A3D3 Trainee Attending WAFER Event

By: Jingyuan Li
November 7, 2023

A3D3 graduate trainees Jingyuan Li and Mingfei Chen gave two presentations at WomXn at the Forefront of ECE Research (WAFER) event held by the University of Washington Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) on Nov 7th.

As described by Wayne Gillam, “WAFER is a day-long event held in the Department once every two years. WAFER showcases research by women and nonbinary people in electrical and computer engineering and related fields and discusses their experiences in academia and the workplace.”

At the event, Dr. Eric Klavins, chair of the ECE department, and Dr. Azadeh Yazdan, from UW ECE and Bioengineering department, gave the opening remarks, shedding light on building an inclusive and diverse research environment. Dr. Emily Mugler, the manager at Meta, shared her research on Neuroprosthesis for Decoding Speech and her career path in the industry. In the following talk, Dr. Vaishnavi Ranganathan, a Microsoft senior researcher, presented her work on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Supply Chain. Dr. Ranganathan also shared her experience as a UW ECE PhD student who joined Microsoft after graduation.

Three panel discussions happened in the afternoon, including student, faculty, and industry panels. These discussions included a diverse mix of students, faculties, and industry researchers sharing their research experiences and providing time for questions, discussion, and socializing. WAFER also provided opportunities for students to share their research during Student Tech Talks. Mingfei presented her interactive audio scene generation work, sparking considerable interest and engagement.

*Students Mingfei Chen and Jingyuan Li present their poster “Be Everywhere-Hear Everything (BEE): Audio Scene Reconstruction by Sparse Audio-Visual Samples“*

The event concluded with an engaging poster session, providing an excellent opportunity for participants to actively share, learn, and engage in meaningful communication with each other. During the session, A3D3 trainees presented their work on neural signal analysis: “AMAG: Additive, Multiplicative, and Adaptive Graph Neural Network For Forecasting Neuron Activity” accepted by NeurIPS 2023, and audio generation: “Be Everywhere-Hear Everything (BEE): Audio Scene Reconstruction by Sparse Audio-Visual Samples” accepted by ICCV 2023.

This interactive session, allowing attendees to showcase their research projects, fostered a dynamic exchange of ideas and insights. Students and faculty explored the diverse topics presented in the posters, encouraging collaboration, networking, and cultivating a vibrant academic community.