S4 Workshop: Networking Before, During, and After Conferences

Date: Wednesday, June 5
Time: 14:30 - 17:30 CEST
Location: MPI-IS Stuttgart
Trainers: Dr. Andrew Schulz and Dr. Vani Sundaram

A large part of creating an academic community is networking at conferences. Often, during graduate school, you attend a similar set of conferences each year. Networking at these conferences can be intimidating and challenging, but is instrumental and important in expanding your academic and research career. Networking allows you to meet collaborators, make friends, and create a personal community of research practice. In this workshop, we will go through some networking fundamentals, including an introduction to social engineering and rapport building. We will cover items including networking tips before, during, and after conferences. Throughout this workshop, we will have active learning activities, allowing participants to practice networking with their IMPRS-IS peers. Resources for networking tips and tools will be provided for all participants as takeaways to help them prep for future networking encounters.

More About our Trainers
Andrew Schulz is a current Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Haptic Intelligence Department at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems - Stuttgart. Andrew is also an IMPRS-IS associated scientist as a biomechanics and bio-inspired design expert. Andrew has been to conferences around the globe to present his research and helped plan both regional and international conferences in fields ranging from biomechanics to material science. 

Vani Sundaram is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in the Haptic Intelligence Department, under the mentorship of Dr. Katherine Kuchenbecker. She earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Biomechanics, from the University of Pittsburgh, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Soft Robotics, from the University of Colorado Boulder. She was a US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. 

Register below to attend this event. With questions, please contact Sara Sorce (sara.sorce@tuebingen.mpg.de).

Note* By registering for this workshop, you express your interest to participate. In the event that a workshop’s interest exceeds attendance capacity, registrations will undergo a review process considering multiple aspects such as motivation, interest, and fit. All registrants will be notified of selection outcomes before each respective workshop.