Events organized by EECScon and Masterworks serve to highlight and promote the groundbreaking research being conducted by students.

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In April 2014, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hosted EECScon, a professional undergraduate research conference. The event, which took place alongside Masterworks, another student research showcase, attracted a large group of guests including fellow students, postdocs, research staff, faculty, and industry visitors.

EECScon 2014 featured peer-reviewed abstracts, professionally printed programs, graduate-student mentoring, and both oral and poster presentations. One of the six oral presenters at the conference was Abubakar Abid, an EECS senior.

The event saw several awards being handed out. Ishwarya Ananthabhotla won the first-place oral presentation award for her work titled "Curved-crease Self-folding for Externally Manipulated Miniature Robots". Sarah Guthrie clinched the first-place poster award for her work titled "Investigating Mechanisms to Prevent Antibiotic Resistance Using QM/MM Modeling". Nitya Subramanian received the "crowd favorite" poster award for her work titled "Anomaly Detection Using Information Extraction and Data Mining".

Rui Jin, an MEng student in EECS, demonstrated his wireless charging system that allows a portable device to charge a variety of other portable devices. Tomas Palacios and Seth Teller, the Masterworks faculty co-chairs, were pleased with the level of research presentations. Rob Gilmore, director of engineering at Qualcomm, was impressed by the number of Masterworks students who used prototypes to support their design decisions and to quantify various performance metrics.

Steve Londrig, senior business development manager for EBO USA, appreciated both EECScon and Masterworks venues to engage directly with the students, learn about new technology, and explore new opportunities. One industry guest was particularly impressed by the chance to see the undergraduate research presentations at EECScon followed by the Masterworks research, providing an indication of depth and growth as students mature in their work.

Heather McCulloh, a unit process development manager at MaineFab, was also impressed with the quality of work at EECScon and Masterworks. The specific students who presented their work at the 2014 Masterworks are not publicly listed. Several other prizes were awarded at the Masterworks event, including raffle prizes made possible by the generosity of Apple and Samsung.

EECScon was launched in 2013 to provide a professional-level research conference experience for undergraduates. Nearly 170 of the more than 280 who registered attended EECScon 2014. Ananthabhotla, the EECS junior who won the EECScon oral presentation first-place award, aims to develop the protocol for self-folding, three-dimensional robotics components using global thermal application.

Jin and Valentina Shin were selected for the 2014 Morris Joseph Levin Award for an outstanding Masterworks thesis presentation. Masterworks 2014 was the best-attended yet, with more than 400 students, faculty, and industry guests interacting with the 38 presenters. EECScon 2014 remains a testament to the innovative research being conducted by undergraduates at MIT.

Events organized by EECScon and Masterworks serve to highlight and promote the groundbreaking research being conducted by students.