KGSP Students Attend the International Conference on Software Engineering

9/02/2022

                                               
                                                                                  KGSP students at ICSE

In May 2022, five KGSP students traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to attend the 44^th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). Farris Alkassem, Iliyas Alabdulaal, and Abdullah Aldossary are sophomores at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mohammed Alkhalifah is a freshman at the University of California, San Diego; and Sadiq Al Humood is a freshman at Boston University. All five students are studying Computer Science and saw this conference as an ideal opportunity to learn more about their field. They knew of this conference from the KGSP Enrichment Digest, a weekly newsletter sent to all students that advertises upcoming enrichment opportunities throughout the academic year. For the first time in 5 years, ICSE took place in the United States. The conference included over 200 sessions of various paper and poster presentations from various researchers and educators in the software engineering field.

The KGSP recognizes the value of KGSP students becoming familiar and engaged with professional organizations within their STEM disciplines during their undergraduate studies. Therefore, the KGSP supports student participation in conferences to help them expand their professional networks, stay up to date with contemporary research findings and  continue to grow professionally. In addition, the information and knowledge students obtain through conference attendance will augment their academic studies and potentially nourish future studies and projects from the academics and professionals they meet.

For Farris, his favorite aspect of the conference was “Connecting and talking with the people in the conference during the poster showing”. He added that “it let me discuss the nitty-gritty details of the research topic they were presenting in great detail. I also connected with some of the said presenters, further strengthening my network!”

Iliyas expressed that his prior coursework and educational experiences helped him understand many topics discussed during the sessions. “[The conference] was beneficial academically and professionally as I learned a lot and met so many intelligent people,” Iliyas stated. “The research presented there was very broad, so I got to see many things from different angles. The most intriguing one was about android malware and detecting how the malware executes.”

 “Farris and Iliyas have a thirst for knowledge and professional experiences,” Tiffany Hsiau, their KGSP Advisor, expressed. “They take their futures seriously and are proactive in personal and career development. As their advisor, I am very proud of their desire for growth, and I am so excited to see what else awaits them!”

The KGSP students’ experiences demonstrate the value of attending conferences as a worthwhile opportunity for networking and further exploring new research and technological developments in their field.