The mission of the Great Minds in STEM Conference is to provide “STEM education, outreach and recognition programs that create awareness, spur readiness, and celebrate success!” I believe the conference stayed true to this mission. This event celebrated successful and cutting-edge research of students in various programs across the country. They also had specialized workshops in cybersecurity, machine learning, and a resume workshop presented by one of their industry partners, Shell to help students learn useful industry skills and also receive feedback to make them more competitive candidates for jobs and internships.

From the first day I attended, I felt welcomed and was in an environment with students passionate about STEM research and careers. I met amazing students from across from Texas, Michigan, Puerto Rico, and Michagan. During the CAHSI Research Poster Competition and Reception, I met a student working on an empathetic menstrual chat box specifically for Black and Latina women with multiple language options. She talked to me about how she is working with women and using current scientific literature to design her chatbot and in the future aims to partner with OBGYNS to further refine it. I also talked with several students from Puerto Rico working on amazing computational biology projects about Alu elements and SINES. It was truly a pleasure being able to talk to passionate students working to make a difference in promoting diversity in STEM and being on the cutting edge of research discoveries. 

I also attended the STEM Talk Showcase: AI Revolution event where several people who came from historically underprivileged backgrounds talked about their educational journeys, the importance of hard-work and determination, and how AI is used in their current jobs. They discussed useful skills to learn for different types of industry jobs, interview tips, and how to network to open doors for opportunities. 

At the Career Fair I had the privilege of talking to dozens of students about demystifying graduate school, what a masters versus PhD program entails, discussing my experience with undergraduate versus graduate education at Berkeley, and what my research entails. I was also able to talk to different universities such as UMich and UCSD about some of their PhD programs and what they are looking for during this application cycle. 

Overall, I loved that this event supported and showcased the hard work of so many CAHSI (Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions) Scholars. As a researcher in science myself, it was inspiring to see the passion, dedication, and hard-work of all of the presenters and it re-invigorated me and solidified that STEM research and the STEM research community is what I want to be part of for my career. I am very grateful I had the opportunity to attend this conference as an Outreach Peer Ambassador.