By Elea Levin
The UW-Madison Association for Computing Machinery student chapter (SACM) and Women’s Association for Computing Machinery (WACM) hosted an in-person and virtual research symposium on April 1. The event had a large turnout, with about 50 students participating in person, in addition to about 30 virtual participants. The symposium consisted of six sessions in total, with the day divided into two halves by the keynote speakers.
Jing Liu, who helped organize the symposium, said the event was a success. “I hope students can learn what their peers are working on, talking with each other in the breaks, fostering the inspiration from curious minds and encouraging junior graduate students or undergraduates to be involved in CS research,” Liu said. “Moreover, it’s about the research atmosphere and community sense that we want to be involved and grow.”
Mark Mansi, a sixth year student studying OS kernel-level memory management, presented at the symposium on financial advice for kernel memory managers. He enjoyed the event because it gave him the chance to learn about other areas of computer science
“I like the symposium because it’s an opportunity to find out what other people are working on, especially in other subfields of CS that I normally wouldn’t study,” Mansi said. “I think the organizers did a great job of organizing and carrying out the symposium this year, and I’m glad that we got to do it again after a couple years of being virtual.”
Isha Padmanaban was part of the organizing committee with WACM and worked hard to ensure that students and presenters alike had the best experience possible.
“I was very happy to see a lot of students turning up to hear about the current works undertaken by the CS student researchers,” she said. “My sincere thanks to everyone involved in this event for making it memorable.”
Rishabh Khandelwal won the first place prize for his presentation “CookieEnforcer: Automated Cookie Notice Analysis and Enforcement.” Five students tied for the runner-up awards.
Liu and other organizers were thankful that the symposium could take place with an in-person option and hopes that it will become an annual event
“I’d like to thank the CS lab for making this possible technically,” Liu said. “Thanks to our speakers for their presentations and the audience for attending.”