Past Events of the Columbia IEEE EMBS Student Chapter

SPRING 2022

Meeting #1: HEX&Co NETWORKING EVENT (MARCH 31, 2022 at 6:30pm)

Fall 2021

Meeting #1: Town Hall + Info Session (October 26, 2021 at 3pm)

Meeting #2: Fireside Chat (November 17, 2021 at 4pm)

Meeting #3: FDA Talk (December 14, 2021 at 7:30pm)

Spring 2021

Meeting #1: Engineering in Medicine Panel – The Case of Cancer (March 10, 2021 at 6pm)

Meeting #2: Columbia IEEE EMBS Trivia Night! (March 25, 2021 at 6pm)

Meeting #3: Skills Workshops on Deep Learning and Meeting #4: Matlab Neural Signal Processing & Scientific Writing

Meeting #5: Diversity Panel

Meeting #6: Lightning Talk Competition

Fall 2020

Meeting #1: Introduction to the IEEE Brain Initiative with Prof. Paul Sajda

The first meeting of our newly reinitiated IEEE EMBS Student Chapter at Columbia took place from 5-6pm on Oct. 16th, 2020 with an introduction to the IEEE Brain Initiative by Prof. Paul Sajda from our Columbia University BME Department.  He introduced the mission of the IEEE Brain Initiative to “advance neurotechnologies…that augment human-machine interaction and mitigate neurological disease and injury” and described recent technology highlights including Brain-Computer Interfaces, Neuromorphic Computing, and bioelectronic medicine. We also had a stimulating question-and-answer session discussing topics ranging from neural information reading/writing and control theory to TMS for treating depression and Elon Musk’s Neurolink!  We also introduced our newly formed executive board and plans for the semester.

Meeting #2: Mentorship Program Kick-off

On November 6th, 2020 from 5-6pm, we held a kickoff event for our Mentorship Program, which matches undergraduate students with graduate student, mentors to discuss research, career/school goals, and life in general.

Since being matched, these mentoring groups have been meeting independently and regularly over the past few months. (Organized by Katherine and Kyla)

Meeting #3: Deep Learning Workshop

Our next meeting on November 13th, 2020 from 3:30-4:30pm was a Deep Learning Workshop held by our chapter Chair/President Kavi Thakoor and our Chapter VP of Grad Activities Elect, Jacob Nye. For the first half of the workshop, Kavi presented on detecting eye diseases from Kaggle OCT images using a hybrid deep learning/machine learning approach making use of the high-performing VGG-16 neural network architecture and a Random Forest Classifier.  During the second half, Jacob presented on segmentation of fMRI data using the UNET architecture and the ADNI dataset.

Meeting #4: Fireside Chat with Prof. Josh Jacobs

Our event on November 18th, 2020 from 4-5pm was a Fireside Chat with Prof. Joshua Jacobs from BME.  He gave a wonderful synopsis of the trajectory of his professional life – both the

triumphs and tribulations.  He answered student questions and provided numerous illustrative anecdotes along the way. (Organized by Adi and Erfan)

Meeting #5: Women in BME Panel

Our next event was on December 3rd, 2020 from 5-6pm, a Women in BME Panel, featuring BME Prof. Helen Lu and BME Prof. Elizabeth Olson.  These superlative BME professors gave amazing technical talks on tissue engineering and on the cochlea, respectively, and continued with a stimulating question-&-answer session afterward as well. (Organized by Cyrus and Emma)

Meeting #6: Alumni Panel

Our last event of the year was an Alumni Panel on December 8th, 2020 from 7-8pm featuring 4 recent alumni of Columbia’s BME Department.  Their pointers on preparing for the job search, interviews, and descriptions of their day-to-day working lives offered great perspective for students soon hoping to be in their shoes. (Organized by Nikita, Shivanni, and Aviral)