On the afternoon of April 12, the second event of the "Knowledge Tea Party" series organized by the ACM-W SJTU Student Chapter - "Listening to Senior Students Talking about International Conferences" - was successfully held at the Long Bin Building of the Joint Institute. We were honored to have five outstanding Ph.D. students from the Joint Institute, including Xingyue Qian, Xiaotian Zhao, Jian Shi, Zexi Li, and Ruiqi Sun, as guests of the seminar, as well as students from the Joint Institute and the School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering.

At the beginning of the event, the main member of ACM-W SJTU Student Chapter, Xinyue Wu, welcomed everyone and briefly introduced the basic information of the organization, the review of the first Knowledge Tea Party, and the activities planned for the future.

After that, we entered the main topic of the activity - the workshop session, which was moderated by the chairman Wang Runxi. Five outstanding graduate students first shared with us their own experiences and interesting stories, their experiences in writing the thesis for the summit, and their suggestions for scientific research.

First, five seniors shared some interesting experiences about their participation in the conference. They described the location of the conference - Valencia, Spain, which is a beautiful technological city with pleasant scenery. They tasted the Spanish specialty of ham and various other cuisines. Of course, they also mentioned that attending the dinner and tea breaks during the conference was not only a great way to taste the food, but also an excellent opportunity to socialize. On such occasions, they were naturally able to communicate and network with some professionals.

Next, the seniors shared their experiences of presentations and poster exchange sessions at the conference venue. They mentioned that during the exchange session, students from different countries enthusiastically asked them about the details of their research and suggested some possible future research directions. This is not only an opportunity to present one's research results, but also a process to get new research inspiration by communicating with other outstanding scholars. For the questions and possible loopholes raised by other scholars, senior scholars Li Zexi and Sun Ruiqi both emphasized the importance of explaining and communicating with a positive attitude, while seizing the opportunity to establish further cooperation and communication with them. Sister Qian Xingyue also mentioned that for those research topics that were not well understood, we could read the scholar's current papers and other related studies in detail after the meeting. During the whole process, we were all infected by the enthusiasm of scholars from different countries for research and their concentration on details. In such academic exchanges, language has never been a barrier, and sincere communication is the most important part.

The seniors also shared some of their experiences with writing and submitting papers for the Top Meeting. According to senior Tim Tip, in writing, the definition of concepts and the logic of writing must be clear, and attention should be paid to drawing vector diagrams. At the preliminary stage of writing, the main content of each paragraph must be clarified. Mr. Li Zexi pointed out that the argumentation process and experimental results must be reliable and reasonable. Regarding the mentality of manuscript submission, Zhao Xiaotian's point of view touched everyone deeply. She reminded us that it is very common to receive rejection notices and revise the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments, and we should adopt the attitude of "good things come in small packages". Whether you are doing research or writing a paper, you need to be patient. In addition, the internal reviewer's comments of the supervisor are very valuable. We must communicate with our supervisors about the details of our writing and try to solve any logical or writing problem based on their comments.

During the Q&A session, the students asked the seniors their questions. For example, some students asked how to cover the research work related to them more broadly and compare it with their experimental results. Sister Zhao Xiaotian shared her experience, for example, you can start by reading an article with strong relevance and read this article and the related literature it cites. Using literature search tools such as ResearchGate to research related topics, or following the latest research progress of some well-known scientists and their labs related to one's research field is also a very efficient way. In addition, some students are curious about how to discover a research hotspot and conduct research on it. According to Timothy, it is relatively difficult to track a research hotspot and conduct research on it because hotspots are always changing. Therefore, the most important thing is to find a topic that you are interested in and good at, and then stick to it. The students also asked how to communicate with famous scholars at international conferences. Mr. Sun Ruiqi's suggestion was to let their supervisors accompany them to communicate with the scholars, and he also suggested further communication and discussion through e-mail.

The event ended with a second group photo of all participants and invited guests. Many of the students gave us feedback after the event that they had gained a new understanding of their own research methods and mindset.

Last but not least, the ACM-W SJTU Student Chapter would like to thank the five outstanding graduate students for coming to our event, as well as all students interested in our event, and we look forward to seeing you at our next event!