We are happy to announce that the inaugural BEAR PGR committee met a couple of weeks ago to start planning for the next 11th PGR conference.
The conference is organised by a team of Ph.D. students and the aim is to invite students from across the university to present their research work with a focus on research computing or utilising any BEAR services.
Dr Liza Jabbour and the BEAR Engagement team will be helping the team and this year the chairman of the committee is Matthew Mould, from the School of Phys + Astronomy.
For further information on the conference check the following link to previous conferences: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/it/teams/infrastructure/research/bear/events/historic/index.aspx
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Interested in joining the BEAR Conference organising Committee? Then read on to see what the previous Committee said about it…
Runzhao Li (PhD Mechanical Engineering FT) – Chair
When I look back the 10th BEAR PGR Conference 2020, some key words appear in my mind. Acknowledgement: As one of the student organizers, I would like to say big thank you to Liza Jabbour, Aslam Ghumra, Stephanie Thompson, Debbie Carter, their help and guidance are the key to success of the conference. Collaboration: I appreciate the great efforts and contributions from the Conference Organizing Committee, the collaboration and team spirit make us overcome so many problems. Open & Exchange: I am proud of the high quality research presentation given by the keynote & student speakers in the conference. Open & exchange are always the mission and pursuit of scholars which also promote the scientific progress for humanity. From this perspective, I ensure that BEAR PGR Conference will continue to boost academic exchange in University of Birmingham in the future.
Khadijat Olorunlambe (PhD Mechanical Engineering FT)
I signed up to be part of the BEAR Conference Organising Committee in order to gain event organising experiences.
Through this, I also hoped to improve my communication skills as it would give me the opportunity to interact with individuals from diverse backgrounds.
Haoying Zhou (PhD Dept of Finance FT)
I am very happy that I had this opportunity to organize the 10th BEAR PGR Conference with my coworkers. The BEAR PGR Conference is one of the best academic conferences, which appealed to researchers from a variety of disciplines every year. Actually, the topic of the 10th Conference in 2020, data analysis and management, is my interested field and the reason why I looked forward to joining the organizaiton activities of the conference. The special situation of COVID-9 this year brought not only challenges to the conference schedule but opportunities for improving the personal abilities of our members of the organization committee as well. Efficient responses to the changes of conference plans made a request for the communication and teamwork skill. Very happy we created brilliance. Especially, many thanks for the support of the keynote speakers. I was very glad to communicate with these keynote speakers who are the experts in their fields. Their excellent talk inspired each of the audience and shared professional knowledge and research experience with other researchers. It was a great honor to have the speaker from the MathWorks to talk about “deep learning” with us in this conference. I believe that Dr. Julia Hoerner’s presentation about the advanced area in AI could give researchers from various fields inspiration for future research.
Sagir Yusuf (PhD School of Computer Sci FT)
As my first conference to be part of the organising committee I have learnt a lot, such as the process of handling ideas from people of different cultural background, conference organisation process, and all other struggles behind a successful conference.
Hiromi Yumoto (PhD Management FT)
Through organizing the BEAR conference, I have learned how similar researchers do use the computers for their own studies (i.e. text mining could be also used in linguistic fields as in the management/economics fields) and the importance of communicating people from a wide range fields.At the same time, I also felt guilty that tasks are likely concentrated few people in this remote working environment. Without hard works of Runzhao and Augustine, the conference could not be run without serious troubles. Besides, as a host of a session, online conference is a bit tricky to make audiences focus on the presentations and raise questions without showing audience faces on video (it might be easier for hosts to organize if participants are engaged to turn on video). Still, as a whole, I enjoyed and learned from joining this organizing team. I really appreciate your continuous and huge supports for our team.
If you would like more information then please email
bear-event@contacts.bham.ac.uk