On July 15th, 2021, the 4th Mini Research Symposium of CFCS and Turing Class was held at Peking University. 20 students from CFCS and Turing Class signed up to present their latest research works and to give tutorials introducing their research fields. Faculty of CFCS and Turing Class research advisors were invited as the judges. This symposium consists of four sessions: lightning talk, poster exhibition, tutorial, panel discussion, attracting more than 100 students to the activity.

In the opening remarks, Professor John Hopcroft told students that they should not only present the research work to others, but also learn how to convey their ideas to the audience in five minutes.

Baoquan Chen, Boya Distinguished Professor of Peking University, executive director of CFCS, Peking university, said in the opening speech that the Mini Research Symposium has become a brand activity of CFCS and Turing Class. It has a milestone significance as it was organized by the students themselves. Simulating an international academic conference, the symposium serves as a “training ground” for students so as to prepare them for the future much bigger international stage.

In the lightning talk session, each speaker refined and introduced their research works in 5 minutes, covering the fields of theoretical computer science, EconCS, machine learning, computer vision, computer graphics, robotics, and etc.

In the afterwards poster exhibition session, 12 speakers stand in front of their own posters to further introduce and discuss their works with the teachers and students who stopped to watch. In the cheerful communication, questions were answered and the speakers gained many valuable opinions.

After voting, Peizhuo Li, Shengwei Xu, Liangwang Ruan won the Best Presentation Award; Zhaohua Chen, Peizhuo Li, Liangwang Ruan won the Best Poster Award. Professors John Hopcroft and Baoquan Chen presented certificates and prizes to the winners.

In the tutorial session, each speaker spent 30 minutes introducing the cutting-edge issues of their own research fields in a very simple way, ensuring that all levels of audience can understand. The topics of tutorials covered theoretical computer science, computer graphics, machine learning, and etc.

Dr. Hao Dong, Dr. Xiao Yuan, Dr. Shaofeng Jiang, assistant professors of CFCS, Peking University, attended the panel discussion answering questions raised by students around the topic “how to do significant research as a beginner”.