I attended SIGITE/RIIT, 2017 to present the paper titled “Identifying Grey Sheep Users by Distribution of User Similarities In Collaborative Filtering” on which I worked with my professor Dr. Yong Zheng. This was a wonderful experience for me as it was first time when I was entitled for the scholarship for my contribution in a research project. I got an opportunity to speak to many faculties and people from the industries about the changes going on in IT. These discussions helped me to gain new insight into IT changes. I also received some research directions through these discussions which has motivated me to come forward with my individual research. Especially, by attending the session about Big Data Analytics, I got to know how researchers are approaching Big Data Analytics in today’s era. Since I have Data management specialization so I would love to come with different findings needed for it.

I also attended other presentations during the conference. It gave me the opportunity to know the breadth of the research work conducted in in today’s era. For example, I was able to interact with various professor like Debzani Deb from Winston-Salem State University, team representing the poster ‘ BOCHICA: Educational Technologies for Water Care” and the team representing the paper “Rebooting Information Technology Programs”. There were lot more papers and posters presented at the conference which were the current hot topic in United States.

Overall, it was a nice experience from my perspective. Also, I would like to take the opportunity to thank ACM-W for selecting me as a recipient of this scholarship. Without this scholarship, it would be hard for me to arrange funding for my trip.