ATE PI 2021 Student Posters

The Student Poster Session was held on October 21, the second full day of the ATE PI conference.  It was at noon, Eastern, which meant the attendees from the East Coast could grab lunch while browsing through the 30 posters, and since I am in Washington State, I took a moment to pour another cup of coffee before starting the session.  The 30 posters represented 36 students, and the exciting and innovative student projects covered a range of topics such as biofuels, nanoparticles, 3D printing, network traffic analysis, virtual reality, machine learning, and more. Each poster was a tile on the conference website, and I clicked on it I could see the poster (and download it), each presenter’s name, picture, and school name, and a sidebar at the right of the poster information where I could chat with the student. Not quite the same as an in-person conference, but the organizers did a great job of getting it close. I cannot say I had a favorite, there were so many fascinating topics, but one that I thought was quite appropriate was titled:  “An Evaluation of Impacts of COVID on Instructional Delivery and Effectiveness of Workshops.” The authors were Kinsey Potter and Dr. George Chitiyo of Tennessee Technological University. As I expected, there was some negative impacts associated with the necessary COVID-19 adaptations, but there were many positives as well. One positive was the increased convenience and decreased price for the participants—I whole-heartedly agree with those!  I would not have been able to attend if I had to go on-site. So, as much as I miss in-person events, I am glad for the increased accessibility and am willing to give up something for it.  I hope in the future there could be a mix of in person and virtual, the best of both worlds! I wish all the students good luck as they continue in their careers, I think they have made a great start.