Pulse

About Pulse

On behalf of the Pulse 2021 Discoveries Team, we invite you to join our tenth annual conference to celebrate the latest innovation within Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Our annual conference brings together hundreds of students and several corporate sponsors for a week-long celebration of technology through workshops, tech talks from cutting-edge technologists, a hardware competition, a software competition and a day-long celebration of women in technology.

Below are some highlights from previous conferences. This year, Pulse will be completely virtual, allowing students to connect with each other and industry leaders via Zoom.

All
Tech Talks
Competitions
Women In Tech

For the Pulse 2019 keynote address, we had the pleasure of hosting the CEO of Texas Instruments, Rich Templeton! Rich talked about the future of semiconductor technologies, explaining the biggest challenges facing the new era of chip design.

For the Pulse 2019 Women in Tech Keynote, we hosted Laura Butler, the VP of OneNote at Microsoft! She discussed her impressive career, innovation at Microsoft, and challenges she has faced as a women and leader in a large tech company.

During the Pulse 2020 Women in Tech day, we held round table discussions, giving students a chance to ask questions and converse with women in the tech industry.

Every year, we host a software competition where students can compete in beginner and advanced coding challenges to win impressive prizes. Previous prizes have included headphones, drones, and VR headsets!

In the Pulse hardware competition, teams work together to create hardware-software prototypes and demo to judges. Past prizes have included Nintendo Switches and portable speakers! This year, the hardware competition will not be part of Pulse, but it will be sure to make a comeback in the upcoming years!