This grant supports the Doctoral Consortium held in conjunction with the IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics to be held on October 11-13, 2011. Attendees of the Doctoral Consortium include graduate students nearing completion of their dissertations who have been accepted to the consortium. Each recent Ph.D. graduate or soon to be graduate chosen to participate in the consortium is paired with a senior researcher who will serve as their mentor during the conference. The goal of this consortium is to provide talented young researchers the opportunity to discuss their work formally and informally with both their peers and senior researchers. These interactions with others coming from different research labs with different viewpoints typically strengthen young researchers ability to communicate the value of their own work and to set their work more clearly in the broader context of the research field as a whole.
This project was designed to have advanced degree computer scientists and engineers who have recently completed their Ph.D. program or were very close to completing their programs to work with seasoned researchers from academia, government, and corporate. This was a doctoral program hosted at the International Joint Conference on Biometrics in 2011. This conference was the meeting place for the world's foremost researchers in the area of Biometrics. The program hosted several Ph.D. students who were mentored by seasoned professional over the course of the conference. The objective of doctoral consortium programs is to allow students from all academic background to interact with leading research professionals within thier sphere of research. Students who may come from lesser academic programs will have the opportunity to engage with well known researchers and students from ell known programs will have an opportunity engage researchers outside of their univeristy. Students participated in a panel discussion to learn about research opportunities in the government and private sector. The panelists also discussed future trends in biometrics and the need to find your passion. The participants (students and mentors) had positive feedback for the program and its execution. Many of the student-mentors continued to talk/collaborate after the conference.
