Abstract: This seminar is primarily aimed at an audience of graduate students, however, faculty and other researchers have found it useful as well. There are three parts. The first part is a discussion of guidelines for preparing and giving technical presentations. This is important because speakers’ technical presentations must be informative and interesting, holding the attention of their audience. The second part is an overview of how to write a technical paper. This is important because papers need to be understandable and convey the research contributions included if the authors want the paper to be accepted at a conference or journal. The technical presentations tips and the technical writing ideas given can be used as a checklist of what one should do and what one should not do. The seminar concludes with my top ten reasons why I like being a professor. This will help students determine if that is a career path they should consider.

Bio: H. J. Siegel is a Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist/Scholar at Colorado State University (CSU). From 2001 to 2017, he was the George T. Abell Endowed Chair Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at CSU, where he was also a Professor of Computer Science. From 2002 to 2013, he was the first Director of the CSU Information Science and Technology Center (ISTeC), a university-wide organization for enhancing CSU’s activities pertaining to the design and innovative application of computer, communication, and information systems. He was a professor at Purdue University from 1976 to 2001. He received two B.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the M.A., M.S.E., and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the ACM. Prof. Siegel has co-authored over 460 published technical papers in the areas of parallel and distributed computing and communications, which have been cited over 18,000 times. As Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI, he has received over $20 million in research grants and contracts. He was a Coeditor-in-Chief of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, and was on the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems and the IEEE Transactions on Computers. Prof. Siegel has served as an “IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor” and an “ACM Distinguished Lecturer.” For more information, please see www.engr.colostate.edu/~hj.