Two weeks ago I had my first PhD public seminar. The purpose of this seminar is to present our research topic at imec to the students in KU Leuven. Therefore, the speech was not quite specialized, but more like a “popular science” talk. About ten PhD pals from imec tagged along, and we posted our poster on the university’s website, crossing our fingers for some KU Leuven students to swing by. I gave a 10 minutes’ small speech about “neural network and AI oriented accelerator”, which is kind of the fundamental knowledge behind my research topic.
Here’s the kicker – our seminar hit the stage right before the final exam week, and it was too close to chrismas holiday. Surprise, surprise, not as many folks as we hoped for showed up. Fortunately some of our friends from the company joined online, so we did have some audiences.
Sure, it might seem like a bit of a dud (only a handful showed up), but for me, it was a good experience. Since it was my debut in the world of popular science presentations, not the usual gig of impressing the brainiacs in my field. Delivering info in a whole new style, I picked up skills that’ll be clutch for my next public show. Watch out, world! 🚀
