Welcome to Rising Stars

The next Rising Stars workshop will be hosted by UT Austin from October 27-28, 2022. Learn more and apply here.

An Academic Career Workshop in EECS

Rising Stars is an intensive workshop for graduate students and postdocs with historically marginalized or underrepresented genders who are interested in pursuing academic careers in electrical engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence and decision-making. Launched at MIT in 2012, the annual event has since been hosted at the University of California at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Eligibility:
Rising Stars is open to graduate students and postdocs of underrepresented genders, including cisgender women, trans people of any gender, non-binary people, and all people with historically marginalized or underrepresented genders. Applicants should be within about 1-3 years of graduating with a PhD at the time of the workshop, or have obtained a PhD no earlier than 2018 and do not currently hold a faculty position. All applications are required to be submitted by June 18, 2021.

Application Materials:
1) Research statement (maximum 1 page excluding references, 12pt font, 1-inch margins, PDF)
2) CV (no page limit, PDF)
3) One letter of recommendation

Location:
This will be a virtual event.

Application Deadline: June 18, 2021 (11:59 PM EDT, but we will honor submissions until 11:59 PM PDT)
Notification: August 18, 2021
Rising Stars Workshop 2021: October 14-15, 2021

From the Workshop Chairs

Welcome to the 2021 Rising Stars in EECS Workshop at MIT. We launched Rising Stars in 2012 to identify and mentor outstanding electrical engineers, computer scientists, and artificial intelligence and decision-making engineers and scientists interested in exploring careers in academia. We are pleased that the program has grown substantially since its beginning. This year’s workshop will bring together the world’s brightest researchers in EECS for two days of scientific interactions and discussions about navigating the early stages of careers in academia.

This year’s program focuses on the academic job search process and how to succeed as a junior faculty member. Our program includes invited presentations on targeting the academic search process, giving effective job talks, and developing and refining research and teaching statements. Panel discussions will focus on the first years of an academic career, covering topics such as forming and ramping up a research group, leadership, maintaining work-life balance, fundraising, and going through the promotion process.

Past Rising Stars attendees have gone on to secure faculty positions at top universities or research positions in leading industry labs. Toward this end, we are pleased to highlight and feature workshop participants here on the Rising Stars 2021 website and in the event brochure.

In addition, we hope that Rising Stars will give participants a chance to network with their peers, opening the door for ongoing collaboration and professional support for years to come.

We are grateful to the advisors who have supported past participants in Rising Stars. We also thank MIT’s School of Engineering, the Schwarzman College of Computing, the EECS-affiliated research labs (CSAIL, LIDS, MTL, and RLE), and the Rising Stars administrative team for their support.

We look forward to meeting and interacting with you all.

2021 Workshop Chairs