EE Graduate Seminar

Research vs. Development: Building a
Career in the Modern Tech Industry

Christopher Morris
Fellow Engineer, Northrop Grumman Corp
PhD (CS) Student, CSEE Dept/UMBC

11:30am-12:45pm, Friday, 4 May 2012, ITE 237, UMBC

With the uncertainty present in todays job market, technical college graduates are under increasing pressure to choose a career path that not only fits their personal strengths and interests. but is sustainable. Jobs and employees are becoming more transient and it is seemingly more difficult to establish a career with longevity. In this talk, we will discuss what a recent graduate can look forward to in various technical career paths, specifically a career in research versus a career in development. I will draw upon personal experience to provide an overview of what a student may expect when entering these careers. Lastly, we will discuss how one can prepare to make the most out of their career choice and handle the volatility of the industry.

Christopher (Chris) Morris is currently a Fellow Engineer at the Northrop Grumman Corporation where he is a member of the Teton Project team. The team is charged with research and development of Open Architecture (OA) Processing solutions for distributed, real-time, embedded (DRE) systems. Prior to joining Northrop Grumman in 2009, Chris was an Advisory Staff Engineer in the Visualization Systems Group at IBM Research in Westchester County, New York, where he researched and developed distributed rendering and visualization systems. He holds a BSME from UMBC (`96), a MSME in from Stanford University (`98), and a MSCS from UMBC (`01). Currently, he is a PhD (CS) Candidate at UMBC. His research interests are computer graphics and scientific visualization.

Host: Prof. Joel M. Morris