The UNM branch of IEEE sent 18 students to attend the annual IEEE Region 6 Rising Stars conference, held for three days in Las Vegas. This conference offers students an opportunity to network with other IEEE students and working professionals, plus presentation sessions to provide information about new trends within the electrical and computer engineering fields. There is also a session for resumes to be critiqued by the professionals in the field. The 2018 Rising Stars conference had presenters from companies such as Ford, Facebook, and Google. A total of 16 sessions were offered covering topics such as entrepreneurship, sustainability, finance, and tips for self improvement.

As part of the Rising Stars conference, Early Warning LLC hosted a cybersecurity capture the flag (CTF) competition. The CTF involves a series of challenges that acquaint participants with the tools available for checking for vulnerabilities in a system and familiarize them with common coding errors to fix. The UNM Branch of IEEE had 18 members compete against 40 other students in the challenges, receiving points for each completed task. UNM students Jonathan Daniels and Mike Chu scored the same number of points, receiving first and second place in the competition. “The competition was a lot of fun,” said Jonathan. “I’m excited we got to go and I hope we get to do more like that in the future. Congratulations to everyone who participated.”

Here is a link to pictures of the Rising Stars events.

The Albuquerque Section congratulates all the students who participated at this year’s Rising Stars conference and looks forward to help send more students next year. Funding for this year’s students who attended the conference was provided in part by UNM’s ECE department, IEEE PACE, and the Albuquerque Section.

Gilberto

2018 Section Treasurer.