UTC-IASE held its first ever Summer Career Fair at the new Innovation Partnership Building at the Storrs Campus of the University of Connecticut on June 6th. The event was well attended by UTC-IASE graduate fellows, UCONN faculty, and representatives from UTC business units including UTC Aerospace Systems, United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), United Technologies Climate Controls & Security, Otis, and Pratt and Whitney. United Technologies Human Resources representatives were also in attendance to answer questions from job-seeking students. The format of the event was a non-traditional career fair in which students were given the opportunity to prepare individual poster presentations showcasing their research and work experience. This format encouraged one-on-one interaction and in-depth conversations about the unique experiences and competencies of the presenting students. UTC-IASE Graduate Fellow William Hale said that “taking part in this career fair was a highly rewarding experience. Not only was I able to showcase the hard work I have put into my Ph.D. research, I was also able to have one-on-one conversations with UTC employees outside of the business unit I collaborate with. This provided me with greater insight into the broad applicability of my research, which will prove to be invaluable as I enter the final years of my Ph.D.” This first career fair event by UTC-IASE was well-received and successful in its goal of forging connections between graduating students and hiring managers at UTC business units. UTC-IASE hopes to follow this success with more career fairs and other events in the future.
Presenting fellows included Brian Baillie, Chen Chen, William Hale, Kyle Palmer, and Evangelos Stefanidis from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Manish Goyal from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; and Yan Li, Khushboo Mittal, Donald McMenemy, Iman Salehi, James Wilson, and Danxu Zhang from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
