Registration for those planning to attend the Graduate and Professional Student Research Conference closes next Wednesday, April 5.

The fourth annual Graduate and Professional Student Research Conference, which takes place April 12 in the Memorial Union, will feature workshops, research presentations and keynote speakers to promote intersectionality and networking among the different departments in the graduate college.

This year’s keynote speakers are ISU alumna Kim Pastega, vice president of fabrication at Boeing Defense, Space & Security, and Shashi Buluswar, CEO at the Institute for Transformative Technologies and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

Electrical and computer engineering Ph. D. candidate Akshit Peer, who serves as the conference chair, told the Daily that this year’s conference, sponsored by the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS), will be more inclusive and promote inter-departmental networking among graduate students.

“We’ve added a case competition for the College of Business and an Impactful Innovations event to involve those from the College of Design,” Peer said.

Andrew Kaul, a Ph. D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology, is serving on the organizing committee for this year’s conference and believes the event is beneficial to graduate students.

“I think this is one of the few opportunities that graduate students have to interact with other departments and programs across the campus,” Kaul said, “It’s probably one of our biggest networking events.”

The organizing committee also hopes newer graduate students will value seeing senior members of the Graduate College in action at the conference.

“They can benefit by getting exposure to the senior graduate students who’ve already done some good research,” said Prashant Singh, a postdoctoral associate at the Ames Laboratory who serves on the committee.

“This will motivate them to do good work and be aware of what’s going on at Iowa State University from a research point of view,” he said.

Singh also said that those senior students will “gain confidence” by presenting their research to large groups of people, which will help them when they begin applying for research positions.

Peer also hopes that undergraduate students will take advantage of a chance to learn about what opportunities the Graduate College has to offer them following graduation.

“They can walk around and observe what research is being done and talk to some of the senior grad students from their department about possible undergrad-graduate collaborations,” Peer said.

The conference also will feature workshops, including a workshop writing a statement of purpose for undergraduate students who are thinking of applying to graduate school, and a three-minute thesis competition, where students have three minutes and one slide to present a thesis to a judging panel.

A meal will be provided to those who register before April 5, according to Planning and Event Management Subcommittee member Siti Sharif, a Ph. D. candidate in hospitality management.

To register for the conference and view the event schedule, visit the research conference page of the GPSS website.

For those who wish to attend the fourth annual Graduate and Professional Research Conference, registration closes after April 5.