Why You Should Attend the SIAM Annual Meeting: Student Days and E-posters

By David Gleich and Mary Silber

The SIAM Annual Meeting will be held in Boston, MA, from July 11 to 15. This post is part 3 in a series of blog posts that highlight what you should know about Annual Meeting from the eyes of the technical co-chairs, Mary Silber and David Gleich.

SIAM values its student members and the SIAM meeting is an opportunity for students to meet others at a similar educational stage, as well as leaders in the field.

The link to “Student Days” on the Annual Meeting webpage takes you to a schedule of highlighted events for students. This schedule starts with a student orientation on Sunday at 5 p.m. The orientation provides an overview of the conference and a way to meet other student participants through a series of games and challenges. SIAM swag will be provided as prizes! Last year’s participants reported that the orientation was a great way to find out about student activities and meet people to hang out with for the rest of the conference.

There are a number of student talks in addition to the poster session. During the poster session, there will be an opportunity to visit the “Communication Doctor’s Booth,” where experts will help you craft your research message for job interviews, press meetings, and publication! We also want to draw students’ attention to the Thursday afternoon meeting with the invited speakers. We can report that the speakers expressed delight and enthusiasm in response to our invitation to meet with the students. This didn’t surprise us, since so many of us seem to remember the impact of meeting some leader in our research field when we were students.

Speaking of the poster session: this year, it will be more electronic! There will be a large collection of e-posters presented at this annual meeting. This is the first time a SIAM meeting has used this new medium and it’s sure to be exciting. E-posters are large LCD displays that enable new forms of presentation and interaction. We are so excited to see how others utilize this medium. One of the co-chairs is even presenting and will be sweating it out with the other presenters!

Also look out for minisymposteria, which are basically the minisymposia of posters. Minisymposteria, consisting of a collection of three or more posters by different presenters grouped around a central theme, will be co-located in the poster viewing area. This is only the second time that a SIAM meeting will feature minisymposteria.

The hashtag for this meeting is #SIAMAN16. Be sure to communicate with us, SIAM, and other attendees via Twitter and Facebook! And share your pictures!

David Gleich is an assistant professor of computer science at Purdue University. Mary Silber is a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. Together, they are co-chairing the 2016 SIAM Annual Meeting.