IEEE Student Professional Awareness Conference (SPAC)

Date: August 2, 2019

Venue: Recreation Hall, North South University.

Host: IEEE NSU Student Branch

Cohost: IEEE Bangladesh Section

Number of participants: 217 (IEEE Member – 209)

On 2nd August 2019, IEEE North South University Student Branch (INSB) along with IEEE Bangladesh Section (IEEE BDS) organized one of the flagship events of IEEE, Student Professional Awareness Conference (SPAC). The goal of this event was to bridge the gap between students and their career goals.

The event consisted of multiple segments. The conference commenced with a talk from Md. Sarwar Jahan on “Integrity at the Workplace.” After the talk, a game session on the same topic was held where every table formed a team, and each team was provided with two ethical problems to solve within a given time. To help the students clearly understand the situations, Wordh Ul Hasan, Tanzil Shahria Himel, and Abir Ahsan Akib moderated the segment. The answers from the teams were judged by Md. Sarwar Jahan and Dr. Lamia Iftekhar and winners for each question were announced later.

Trailing this session was a technical talk session on “Emerging Research: Data Center, LIDAR & PET Image Related Applications of Slow-Light Enabled Photon Trapping Sensors” and the talk was given by reputed nanosystems and nanotechnology researcher M. Saif Islam. He shared his own research work and also gave the participants a glimpse of what the top researchers are working on at this moment.

Followed by the technical session, participants went on a tea break and after the break, a session on “Career Development” begun. In this session, three reputed professionals, including two renowned entrepreneurs, formed a panel, and the participants were given the opportunity to ask them career-oriented questions. Mohammad Oli Ahad, Rayeesa Nafis, and Yameen Ahmed were the esteemed panelists of this session, and Rummana Rahman moderated it. The moderators provided insightful advice on Career Development and answered all the queries of the participants in a lively way. The participants appreciated their way of seeing the professional world and their methodologies for overcoming the hurdles.

After the career development session, Shojib Ghosh provided a technical talk on the “Smart City Initiative” and following the talk, guests and participants went on a lunch break.

After lunch the conference resumed with the “Ambassador Program: Membership Recruitment and Retention” carried out by Raihan Ur Rashid. He shared the success stories of IEEE Bangladesh section in membership development and also unveiled five co-located conferences to be hosted by IEEE Bangladesh Section later this year.

The next segment was on “Rising Star” conducted by A R M Abdullah Rocky and Irtiza Haque. They demystified the Rising Star program and also shared some valuable professional and life lessons with the students afterward.

The conference proceeded through with another non-technical talk session on “Art of Mastering Communication Skills” conducted by Dr. Arshad M. Chowdhury. His speech on “Art of Mastering Communication Skills” was enlightening and thought-provoking. A lot of engineering students don’t take this skill seriously and suffer in the long run. His speech helped the participants to understand the necessity of being a good communicator as well as teaching them a thing or two about how to be good at it. This session also included a picture perception game where two members from each team described what they understood from the picture and presented on it.

Following was another interesting talk session on “Robotics for 4th Industrial Revolution” and the talk was given by Abul Al Arabi.

Dr. Shaikh Anowarul Fattah conducted the next session on “Insights on SROI: IEEE HAC” and the session was lively and interactive. Almost every engineer has an idea or two to do good for humanity, but most of the ideas and projects are not sustainable, and thus, most of them do not bear fruit. The speaker advised to find and target a locality for a project and also shared the sustainable development goals set by IEEE.