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Conversazione / Advice to 4th Year Students - 2009

Advice to Fourth Years invited to present at the Conversazione

The 2009 Research Conversazione will be held on Friday 30 October, 12.00 to 4.30pm.

This year we will be having a combined SIT/SEIE Research Conversazione exhibition in the SIT building Winter Garden on Friday, 30 October. There will be around 40 fourth year and 60 postgraduate projects on display at this venue. 

The Conversazione is an opportunity for students to meet industry people who might be interested in their work and an opportunity for students to win a prize for excellence in project work. Several students have found employment through contacts made at the conversaziones. Around 100 industry guests attended the 2007 Conversazione.  

The School of Electrical and Information Engineering will select three fourth year students to present their research projects in each of the following eight categories:

  1. Biomedical Engineering
  2. Computer Engineering
  3. Digital Systems and Electronics
  4. Power Engineering
  5. Software Engineering
  6. E-commerce
  7. Telecommunications Engineering
  8. Telecoms: Next Generation Applications. 

 

SIT will select three fourth year students to present their research projects in each of the following five categories:

  1. Computer Science
  2. Multimedia and Visualisation
  3. Networks and Systems
  4. NLP and Information Systems
  5. Software Development

Some fourth year stdudents are involved in both schools so they could be eligible to enter a SIT category or an SEIE category (but not both).

Selecting EIE Fourth Years to present at the Conversazione

  1. All EIE fourth year students will be invited to enter their project in one or more of the above categories. Note that some projects can be entered in more than one category so they can be moved around a bit to even up the numbers.
  2. Dr Jim Rathmell will supervise the selection of SEIE fourth years for presentation at the Conversazione. Fourth years interested in entering should inform their research supervisors and Dr Jim Rathmell.
  3. To enter the contest the students are required to prepare an A1 poster of their project following the template shown on http://www.ee.usyd.edu.au/~jimr/teach/files/PosterTemplate.ppt
  4. The academic staff will select the 24 projects which will be presented in the eight EIE categories at the Conversazione.
  5. The students selected for presentation at the Conversazione will finalise their A1 posters and forward them electronically to Dr Rathmell by MONDAY 19 OCTOBER.
  6. The EIE Foundation will organise printing and lamination of posters for display on the day. In order to meet the Foundation deadline and ensure that your poster is included in the Conversazione material, the above deadline needs to be strictly adhered to.

 

Selecting SIT Fourth Years to present at the Conversazione 

A similar process will be followed to select SIT fourth years to present at the Conversazione. Students should confirm details with the School of Information Technologies.

Judging the Fourth Year Prizes at the Conversazione

  1. The SIT and SEIE students selected to present at the Conversazione will present their posters at the on level 1 Winter Garden of the SIT building on Friday, 30 October, 2009 from 12.00pm  to 4.00 pm.
  2. Industry guests will judge the best project in each of the fourth year project categories (SIT plus SEIE) between 1.45 and 4.00 pm.   Industry guests will have a marking sheet listing all the fourth year projects on display. Industry guests will be invited to rank the projects in each category as best “3” to “1” least best in their opinion.  

    Guests will be asked to take into account the following elements when making their adjudication:
  • The quality of the research (a 50% weighting);
  • The quality of the presentation (25%);
  • The relevance of the project to industry's need(25%)                                                                                                                          

The rankings received from all the guests who participate in judging a category will be aggregated and the student who receives the highest aggregate ranking will be declared the winner. 

In the event of more than one student receiving the highest aggregate score, each of the students receiving the highest aggregate score will be declared to be a shared winner of the prize and the cash prize will be divided equally among the winners.

  1. The awards will be presented on the day of the Conversazione at 4.00 pm. All students participating in the exhibition should attend the prize presentations and be ready to come forward if their names are called out.

Putting up the Posters

On the day of the Conversazione, the fourth year projects will be displayed in the level 1 Winter Garden of the new SIT Building. Presenters should put their posters up on the day of the Conversazione by 12 noon. Display boards will be in place in groups of three with each group marked, eg, "Fourth Year Project - Biomedical Engineering".

A4 Handouts

Fourth years presenting at the Conversazione are advised to print, say, 30 copies of their posters in A4 size to give to interested people. The presenter's email address should appear on the handout in case visitors want to contact the presenter.  

Appropriate Dress for Conversazione

All students presenting at the Conversazione are advised to dress as if they were going to a job interview because a job offer just might come out of your presentation. Several students have been offered jobs following their Conversazione presentations in the past. 

Name Tags

The Foundation will produce name tags for all the fourth year students presenting.
 

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