Report by
B. Brian Park, Ph.D.
Conference Chair
Associate Professor
University of Virginia
Donghun Park, Ph.D.
Program Chair
Chief Engineering Officer
3DFlexible Inc./LPS-UMD
The 3rd Virginia Washington Metro Regional Conference 2020 (VWMRC 2020) was successfully held on Saturday, May 9, 2020. The original plan was to host the conference jointly with the Korean American Society in Biotech and Pharmaceuticals (KASBP) on June 5-6, 2020 in Maryland. However, due to COVID-19, we decided to adjust our schedule and hosted it completely online, while KASBP postponed their conference.
The conference began with congratulatory remarks by Dr. Jun-Seok Oh, KSEA President, and Mr. Seok-Ho Kim, KUSCO Director. The keynote speech titled “Inspiration through Innovation” was given by Dr. Changmin Son, Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor at Virginia Tech. Dr. Son emphasized the power of inspiration using examples that are based on the innovative solutions for scientific and engineering challenges. Given his expertise in the gas turbine engine for aerospace applications, he started with environment, power system, aircraft, and then went beyond. He also emphasized the changes in the requirements for future scientists and engineers to follow as they need to be prepared for transdisciplinary research environments.
The first plenary speaker, Dr. Young Hoon Kwak, Editor-in-Chief of American Society of Civil Engineers Journal of Management and Associate Professor at George Washington University, presented on “Engineering Essentials of Writing & Reviewing Journal Papers.” His talk highlighted essential tips of writing a solid journal paper and discussed where to publish, how to convey your research, what to emphasize, how to revise and resubmit, and what to do with rejections. We believe his presentation was particularly beneficial for graduate students, post-docs, and researchers trying to fine-tune ways to think, prepare, and write good journal papers.
In order to provide graduate students and post-doctoral researchers with an opportunity of showcasing his/her research, the organizing committee solicited research presentations and selected five presenters as featured short presentation finalists. Among them, two were selected for best presentation awards. The first place winner was Dr. Joon-Seok Kim from George Mason University who presented on distance-aware competitive spatiotemporal searching, and the second place winner was Ms. Sunwoo Park from FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine who presented about smoking cessation during the prenatal period as a potential risk factor for postpartum depression.
During lunch, the organizing committee provided each participant with a Panera e-gift certificate for a networking lunch. Most participants pre-submitted a one-page slide highlighting their educational background, research area, and future plans along with email address, Linkedin profile or personal website, and briefly introduced themselves for future collaboration opportunities.
Our second plenary session consisted of a Job Search Panel which had three speakers representing academia, Prof. Mintai Kim at Virginia Tech, industry, Ms. Jieun Chon at Google, and government, Dr. Youngsul Jeong at US Patent and Trademark Office. The session began with each panelist’s personal journey of securing their jobs and tips, and followed by extensive questions and answers.
The conference had 4 parallel invited talk sessions including two engineering, one science, and one health sessions. A total of 15 invited speakers presented a general overview of their research and highlighted their own research and its significance.
In an effort to ensure active participation during the virtual conference, we offered three raffles throughout the duration of the conference and a major raffle at the end of the conference. Many lucky conference participants received one $200 raffle, two $100, four $50, and twenty $25. The conference had over 90 registrants and was actually attended by 67 participants.
The organizing committee consisted of Dr. B. Brian Park (Conference Chair), Dr. Mintai Kim and Dr. Gon Namkoong (Conference Co-Chairs), Dr. Donghun Park (Conference Program Chair), Dr. Hyun Woong Cho, Dr. Young B. Choi, Dr. Sang Mok Jeong, and Dr. Nam-Cheol Kim (Conference Program Co-Chairs) and Mr. Hyunglok Kim (Local Organizing Committee Chair).
We truly appreciate the generous financial support from KSEA and KUSCO, and the members of the organizing committee for their invaluable time and efforts for making the first virtual conference very successful. Finally, a few selected testimonials from our participants that indicate the virtual conference was a success.
Although VWMRC2020 was not in-person, I actually appreciated and learned a lot from the virtual conference. I was still able to talk to people that I would like to communicate with “private” chats. I also appreciate that everyone was very professional and helpful. I felt that the established professors/professionals try to help out the budding scientists and researchers.
Excellent event. Online conference was better than expected.
Online conference was my first experience, but it was really helpful. Thank you very much for offering me this good chance.
This was my first virtual conference and I am impressed with how smoothly the event went along without any technical problems or glitches. I was able to network with people whose work is related to my research. I was able to get resources for interviews and career advice. Thank you very much for organizing this event. Best wishes to all the panelists and organizers!
I greatly appreciate for hosting the conference as a virtual meeting due to COVID-19. I am glad that I could attend the conference and got a chance to virtually meet all the scientists. It was a great experience. (I know it were some limitations due to hosting the conference as a virtual meeting, but I wish there is an actual lunch break where we can have a break from the conference even if I enjoyed short self-introduction from all the participants. Also, I hope there is a time for networking where people from same field get into a group and have a chance to talk to each other casually) Thanks for all the hard work and hosting the conference!
I was glad to participate in VWMRC 2020. Thanks to COVID-19, I could take advantage of virtual conference systems including having more time to sleep! Of course, face-to-face interactions with fellow researchers and professionals might bring more opportunities to us to build networks and collaborations across the local area. I believe the social programs, i.e., lunch and self-introduction, filled the gap. Diversity of the program including technical sessions and job search tips from different sectors is highly satisfactory. Also, the well-divided parallel session allowed me to focus on the topics in which I am interested most. I would thank the conference organizers for their excellent coordination and their valuable effort.
KSEA e-Letters 