Last Updated: Wednesday, 06. August 2008
For comments, suggestions, reporting typo or grammatical errors : please email stevenhalim at gmail.com

Throughout my PhD candidature and beyond, I must and I will attend several academic conferences related with my research area to gain the newest knowledge, to present my own research work, to gain acknowledgement from peers, to network with researchers with similar interest, and of course, to visit new places throughout the world =).

The problem is always in the funding issue... Usually, many good universities/research centers are located in Europe or United States... I may not be able to travel these places easily.

International Conferences Attended:
(in reverse chronological order)

Currently two...
I want to produce more results and got enough funding to travel to many more places... =)

1. User Interface Software and Technology, Montreux, Switzerland, 15-18 October 2006.

My second conference... :)

2. Metaheuristics International Conference, Vienna, Austria, 22-26 August 2005.

My first ever conference... During this one week conference, I got the chance to meet important people (I don't talk much with them, too shy..., but at least now I know their face and vice versa). Some of those "important" people are: Fred Glover ("inventor" of Metaheuristics), Ibrahim H. Osman (his name appears in many good papers), Mauro Birattari (has one similar research interest as mine: the tuning problem), Thomas Stuetzle (ILS, tuning problem, and stuffs), Jean-Paul Watson ("run time dynamics... I need to study his works more"), Andrea Schaerf, Stefan Voss, Andreas Fink (people related with metaheuristic software frameworks), Pierre Hansen (VNS and have so many experience in research), Richard F. Hartl, Karl Doerner, Walter J. Gutjahr (professors from Vienna universities who organized this conference), Kenneth Soerensen, David Woodruff, Zhang Chong (they presented works related to distance function), Sabine Piana and Thomas Fischer (two PhD students, we are on the same boat, good luck for your research), and many many others... I can't list them down one by one...

In short, this conference has allowed me to see the latest development in metaheuristic area, present my own work and have it acknowledged by others, and return home with more ideas and motivations =)....

I hope that I can come back for MIC2007, Montreal, Canada =).