Events Listing

Hosted by the Bell Museum

Recommended for all ages

Spotlight Science is a regular program connecting you to current research at the University of Minnesota and giving you the chance to meet the scientists and students who make the projects possible. Join us for special conversations and unique interactive experiences.

SciPride celebrates the scientific contributions of the LGBTQIA+ community at the University of Minnesota. Kick off Pride Month by connecting with a diverse group of students, faculty, and research staff working across scientific fields. Learn about their work through hands-on activities and demonstrations all around the museum, with topics ranging from sea anemones and brains to solar energy and satellites.

This is an in-person event at the Bell Museum. Activities and events will be held throughout the museum and are included in the cost of regular admission.

Get details and learn more 

For information about conferral ceremonies, tickets, ceremony regalia, and other details check the University's Commencement  2023 website. 

Visit the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) Commencement website for additional details.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will be hosting a celebration for our graduating students, both graduate and undergraduate. We will post additional details for each celebration as soon as we finalize them. So watch this space! 

ECE Graduate Students Celebration

Date & Time: Friday, May 12, 1:00 PM
Place: Malcolm Moos Health Sciences Tower, Room 2-650

ECE Undergraduate Students Celebration

Date & Time: Friday, May 12, 3:30 PM
Place: Malcolm Moos Health Sciences Tower, Room 2-650

Room 3-210 in Keller Hall will be an overflow seating space with live streaming of the event as it takes place in Moos Tower. 

There will be a reception with light refreshments and beverages in Keller Hall outside room 3-210 between the graduate and undergraduate celebrations: 2 - 3:30 PM

Continuous measurement of molecular biomarkers - in vivo

A biosensor capable of continuously measuring specific molecules in vivo would provide a valuable window into patients’ health status and their response to therapeutics. Unfortunately, continuous, real-time molecular measurement is currently limited to a handful of analytes (i.e. glucose and oxygen) and these sensors cannot be generalized to measure other analytes. In this talk, we will present a biosensor technology that can be generalized to measure a wide range of biomolecules in living subjects. To achieve this, we develop synthetic antibodies (aptamers) that change its structure upon binding to its target analyte and produce an electrochemical current or emit light. Our real-time biosensor requires no exogenous reagents and can be readily reconfigured to measure different target analytes by exchanging the aptamer probes in a modular manner. Importantly, we will discuss methods for generating the aptamer probes which are at the heart of this biosensor technology.

About Prof. H. Tom Soh

Dr. H. Tom Soh is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Radiology at Stanford University. He earned his B.S. with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science with Distinction from Cornell University and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Between 1999 and 2003, he served as a technical manager of MEMS device research group at Bell Laboratories and Agere Systems. Between 2003 and 2015, he was the Ruth Garland Professor at UC-Santa Barbara in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials. His lab moved to Stanford in 2015. He is a recipient of numerous awards including MIT Technology Review’s “TR 100” Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, Beckman Young Investigator Award, NIH TR01 Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Humboldt Fellowship, and was a Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. He is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Cracking the Code: New Leader Roles in Cybersecurity

Speaker: Jodie Kautt, Vice President of Cyber Security, Target Corporation

Technically Speaking is a free lively series of discussions that explores the intersection of technology and business. Each of our speakers plays a leadership role in the tech sector: they share their career journeys, what they've learned along the way, and how they believe new innovation will reshape their industries. Networking time before and after the talk as well as an extended Q&A makes this a unique and dynamic opportunity for technology students who want to learn more about the business of tech.

Robustness of gradient methods for data-driven decision making

Gradient descent and its accelerated variants are increasingly used for learning and data-driven control of uncertain dynamical systems in which an approximation of the gradient is sought through noisy measurements. In the first part of the talk, we utilize techniques from control theory to quantify robustness of accelerated first-order algorithms to stochastic uncertainties in gradient evaluation. We identify fundamental tradeoffs between noise amplification and convergence rates for any acceleration scheme similar to Nesterov's and heavy-ball methods. We also examine performance and efficiency of model-free reinforcement learning methods which attempt to find an optimal control action for an unknown dynamical system by searching over the parameter space of controllers. For systems with unknown state-space parameters, we provide theoretical bounds on the convergence rate and sample complexity of the random search method applied to the standard linear quadratic regulator problem.

About Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic

Mihailo Jovanovic is a professor in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the founding director of the Center for Systems and Control at the University of Southern California. He was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, from 2004 until 2017, and has held visiting positions with Stanford University, the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. Prof. Jovanovic received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2007, the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award from the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2013, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2014. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 

Speaker Rigbeselam (Rigbe) Mengistu is a University of Minnesota Duluth alumna. 

Join speaker Rigbeselam (Rigbe) Mengistu, MA in a workshop on the topic of Cultural Integration in the workplace. We all come from different cultural identities and backgrounds which likely involve different norms and values of importance. In exploring potential workplaces we may wonder of any barriers that may emerge in navigating a new work culture. Rigbe will lead us in activities that help us to understand our cultural identities, and how to integrate our cultural identities in work settings in ways that work best for us leading to feelings of empowerment and increased confidence. Rigbe completed her Bachelors at University of Minnesota Duluth, and now holds a Masters in Industrial Organizational Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She has over 10 years of experience in Human Resources and Organizational Management. This event is hosted by UMN Career Services with support from Student Services Fee Funding. 

Please register for the event

Students in the ECE senior design course and ECE honors project students will be demonstrating the projects they have worked on over the semester as part of their graduation requirements. This is a joint event, so students from the mechanical engineering department will be presenting their design projects too. Stop by and check out what our soon to be graduates have worked on throughout the semester.

Our newest ECE students showcase the IoT devices they have built over the semester in the Intro to Computing Systems course EE 1301. Stop by, check out the projects, and talk to the students about their work. 

Register to attend the Zoom event

Please join for a live presentation discussing the H-1B cap and H-1B cap exemptions, among other options. The presentation will be done by Robert “Bob” Webber, a Twin Cities-based immigration attorney with 20+ years of experience in employment-based immigration law.

This event will be held via Zoom on Tuesday, April 25th at 12:00pm CT, and it will include a live Question and Answer opportunity with Webber. This event will also be recorded and shared on the ISSS website.

Please register via Zoom to attend the live workshop, or to request a recording, and to share your questions with us. Email Jane, UMN International Career Consultant, at sitt0036@umn.edu with any questions.

Need a headshot for LinkedIn, Handshake or another reason? CSE Career Services is offering free professional headshots to CSE undergrads. Sign up for a half-hour time slot: z.umn.edu/CSEHeadshots. Friday, April 21, 11am-3pm, Lind Hall, floor 4.