Marcellin Brings Dozens of Students to ITC Conference

The International Telemetering Conference in October 2021 drew hundreds of telemetry experts from government, academia and industry. Two dozen of these attendees were University of Arizona students, most of them undergraduates.

Michael Marcellin, Regents Professor in ECE and International Foundation for Telemetering Chaired Professor, believes it’s important to provide students at all levels, particularly undergraduates, with the opportunity to attend conferences. This year, he took 18 undergraduate students, who wrote five papers between them, and six graduate students, who wrote two papers between them.

“I’ve had several students find jobs at this conference,” Marcellin said. “The opportunity for them to find jobs, to go out and see real professional engineers and to give a presentation in front of that kind of audience is great for them.”

Marcellin brought students from four clubs he advises: Arizona Autonomous, Coaster Cats, Baja Wildcat Racing and Wildcat Formula Racing. He also brought students from a capstone team he sponsored in the 2020-2021 academic year and a group of graduate students — some he is advising, and some who are advised by ECE Department Head Tamal Bose. In addition to being a place where many students find jobs, Marcellin said the conference also inspires many undergraduates to further their education.

“I get a really high percentage of them that go on to grad school, and I think that that’s partially from the experience of going to a conference to present, and finding out that that’s what they do in grad school," he said.

Marcellin, a proponent of providing research opportunities to undergraduate students, has been taking students to the conference for many years. The theme of this year’s event was “Enabling Technological Innovation, While Serving Today’s Users.”

“It’s a super unusual thing  –  I’m not aware of anybody anywhere that take so many students, especially undergraduates,” he said. “It’s normal for graduate students to go to conferences and present papers, but the undergraduate attendance is a really special thing.”

The full list of student attendees is below.

Sabrina Ahumada

Alexander Berian

Lexie Boone

Lance P Casto

Emily Cawley

Lucas Creery

Benni B Delgado

Eric Anthony Duarte

Joseph Christian Emnett

Daniel Fuehrer

Gerardo Garcia

Karson Knudson

Calvin Larsen

Diana Meyer

Lucca Ouriques Magalhaes

Marc Cody Mendez

James Nguyen

Micah Aleksander Sieglaff

Nick Sivertson

Oliver Sjostrom

Amadou Tall

Nicolas Jan Wen Tan

Noel Hagos Teku

Anibal Torres