Adeola Adesoba, a graduate student in the Information Quality Graduate Program at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, was selected to attend the Computing Research Association (CRA) Graduate Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Diabilities (URMD) workshop held in Austin, Texas, March 5-7, 2020.
Adeola who is currently in the MSIQ program participated in the prestigious program which is aimed at preparing graduates students for careers in the computer science industry. The mission of the workshop is to enhance innovation by joining with industry, government and academia to strengthen research and advanced education in computing.
The third annual CRA-URMD Workshop attracted students from schools across the United States and Canada. CRA covered the travel expenses for all selected students that collectively represent a diverse set of computing-related research areas and institutions.
At the workshop, students spent three days interacting with senior computing researchers and professionals, who shared pertinent information on graduate school survival skills, as well as more personal information and insights about their experiences. The workshop also included a mix of formal presentations and informal discussions and social events.
According to Adeola, attending the Grad Cohort for URMD enabled her to build mentoring relationships and developed peer networks with other students from institutions across the United States and Canada and as well professionals from IBM, Google, Microsoft, Oak Ridge Research and Bloomberg respectively.
“I was able to learn about professional and personal development, how to make a decision to enroll into a PhD program, and balancing graduate school with other aspect of my lives.” Adeola explained. “This workshop also exposed me to the various research that other students are doing and provided insights on how I can start developing my research projects”, she stated referring to the poster session where students present their research and received feedback.
Adeola is a volunteer researcher at the Entity Resolution and Information Quality (ERIQ) Lab assisting with the regression testing of the OYSTER software, an entity resolution tool developed by IQ students.
For more information on the CRA URMD Grad Cohort Workshop visit https://cra.org/cra-wp/grad-cohort-for-urmd/.
