Illinois to Host Rising Stars in EECS 2019

5/14/2019

CS's Nancy M. Amato and ECE's Wen-Mei Hwu are co-chairs for the annual event which is aimed at providing advice and networking opportunities to about 60 female graduate students and postdocs.

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This year's annual Rising Stars in EECS workshop will be hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
This year's annual Rising Stars in EECS workshop will be hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

This year’s Rising Stars in EECS, an intensive workshop for promising early-career women in electrical engineering and computer science, is coming to Urbana this fall.

Illinois CS Department Head Nancy M. Amato and ECE ILLINOIS Interim Department Head Wen-Mei Hwu are this year’s co-chairs for the annual event, which provides a series of panels and discussions aimed at providing advice and networking opportunities to about 60 female graduate students and postdocs who are interested in pursuing academic careers. 

“We’re thrilled to be this year’s hosts for Rising Stars and to be able to provide advice and encouragement to women who are interested in faculty careers,” said Amato. 

“Role models and mentors are vitally important in making the leap from graduate student to professor,” said Hwu. “This is an incredible opportunity to expand your network.”

Illinois CS Assistant Professor Dakshita Khurana was a participant in 2017. “The Rising Stars workshop was an incredible opportunity to learn from the best of the best in academia, interact with phenomenal mentors, and connect with outstanding peers,” she said.

Applications for Rising Stars 2019 are open to prospective participants through June 15, 2019.  A flyer is available to download and share to help spread the word about this exciting opportunity.

This is the first time that Illinois has hosted Rising Stars in EECS, which was founded in 2012 by MIT and has been previously hosted by Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.

The Rising Stars in EECS Class of 2018 at MIT.  Photo: Justin Knight
The Rising Stars in EECS Class of 2018 at MIT. Photo: Justin Knight

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This story was published May 14, 2019.