Link Lab Professional Development

Link Lab Professional Development

The Link Lab offers professional development sessions every Friday through the semester on topics to help you improve your skills, learn from others, and grow your career. We invite speakers from around Grounds and outside UVA to share their knowledge with our students. This is an excellent opportunity to develop your professional skills whether you are pursuing a career in industry or academia.

Fall 2025 

August 29 - Research Resources
Speaker: Erich Purpur - Science and Engineering Research Librarian
•    accessing scholarly resources (articles, databases, etc.)
•    trainings and workshops offered to learn programming languages, software, etc.
•    where to go for help with statistics, programming, computing, etc.
•    citation management w/ tools like Zotero
 
September 5 - Preparing for the Engineering Career Fair and Your Job Search
Speaker: Sam Lake – PhD Plus
•    How do you communicate that you have the skills employers are looking for?
•    How do you demonstrate that you have "applied real-world" experience?
•    Job search strategies (including informational interviews, professional networking, attending career fair)
•    Day-of strategies for the Engineering Career Fair (on September 15 & 16)
•    Resume/CV

September 12 – “What I Wish I Knew Earlier About Research”
Speaker: Professor Ben Calhoun
•    Useful perspectives, questions, and best practices to guide you through your research journey.

September 19 – TBD

October 3 - Student Flash Talks

November 7 - Subtract 
Speaker: Leidy Klotz
Book summary from site: “We pile on “to-dos” but don’t consider “stop-doings.” We create incentives for good behavior, but don’t get rid of obstacles to it. We collect new-and-improved ideas, but don’t prune the outdated ones. Every day, across challenges big and small, we neglect a basic way to make things better: we don’t subtract. Leidy Klotz’s pioneering research shows us what is true whether we’re building Lego models, cities, grilled-cheese sandwiches, or strategic plans: Our minds tend to add before taking away, and this is holding us back. But we have a choice―our blind spot need not go on taking its toll. Subtract arms us with the science of less and empowers us to revolutionize our day-to-day lives and shift how we move through the world. More or less.”

Spring 2025

  • January 31: Faculty Flash Talks
  • February 7: Understand Your Job Offer Package and Employment Selections - HR Benefits Overview (Erica Wheat)
  • February 14: Managing Undergraduate Researchers ( Amar Kulkarni, Avery Walters, Megan Gunn, and Zack Landsman)
  • April 11: Link Lab Faculty Panel Discussion on AI (Madhur Behl, Yen-Ling Kuo, Rohan Chandra) 

Other offerings to support your professional development and technical skills training can be found here: