WHAT: Research Seminar WHERE: The Seminar Room, Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems WHEN: 3 PM, Friday, August 27, 2004 TITLE: Righting Right and Wording Better WHO: Joe Picone Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems Mississippi State University (email: picone@cavs.msstate.edu) John Brocato Shackouls Technical Communication Coordinator Bagley College of Engineering Mississippi State University (email: brocato@engr.msstate.edu) ABSTRACT: Technical communication skills are an extremely important part of research. Graduate students don't often understand the importance of publication during their graduate studies, particularly with respect to the expectations of their advisors and funding agencies. Funding agencies often measure the success of a research project in terms of its publication record and look for prestigious peer-reviewed publications as evidence of good science. Employers often screen candidates based on their publication record. Your ability to communicate effectively will be highly correlated with your success and longevity as an engineer or scientist. In this talk, we will discuss the organization and content of a typical technical conference paper. We will also demonstrate some formatting tricks in Microsoft Word that will help you better engineer your documents. This seminar is intended to be a highly interactive skill-building workshop - bring lots of questions! BIOGRAPHY: Joe Picone is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and is also a member of the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems where he directs research into intelligent electronic systems. John Brocato is the Shackouls Technical Communication Coordinator for the Bagley College of Engineering. He has developed and directed the technical writing curriculum for engineering students. CONTACT: If you have any questions, please send email to Allan Bullwinkel (email: allan@cavs.msstate.edu, tel: 325-9399) or Joe Picone (email: picone@cavs.msstate.edu, tel: 325-5444). SCHEDULE: 08/20: C. Alley and J. Allen, University of Southern Mississippi "Mississippi Automated System Project (MASP)" **> 08/27: J. Picone and J. Brocato, Mississippi State University, "Righting Right and Wording Better" 09/03: N. Parihar, Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, "The Aurora Large Vocabulary Evaluation" (dry-run of a EUSIPCO '04 conference presentation) 09/10: Volunteers?