2026 Workshops
More are being added so check back often! Workshops offer students a chance to experience and learn the latest technologies that you can’t get in a classroom. Take part in these hands-on, interactive sessions hosted by incredible partners like Keysight, TestEquity, Texas Instruments, AMD, and the Humanitarian Technologies Board. Discover more about last year’s workshops below, and stay tuned for more being added. Space is always limited!
As senior design projects continue to become more complex and ambitious, noise and coupling become a bigger headache: manifesting as intermittent component failures, power supply instability, and digital communications glitches. This deep-dive will cover the basics of EMC, how to diagnose and mitigate it. Culminating with a live demonstration of low cost EMC tools accessible for college seniors or researchers. Lesson learned in this workshop will enable attendees to achieve high-performing, EMC optimized designs. Limit 60 participants
- Friday, November 6 – 3:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M.
This interactive tutorial gives students hands-on experience with the breadth of the AMD computing ecosystem using the AMD University Program (AUP) Learning Cloud, a preconfigured JupyterHub environment that lets participants dive straight into real workloads on AMD hardware. Working directly on AMD GPUs through the ROCm software platform, students will run real-time computer vision and object detection with PyTorch, explore generative AI and LLM inference, and control a simulated robotic arm using GPU-accelerated physics for a taste of Physical AI. Attendees will progress from familiar frameworks down to where HIP fits into GPU programming and portability. Along the way, we’ll zoom out to the full AMD compute landscape, comparing Ryzen AI’s combined CPU/GPU/NPU platform, large-scale Instinct accelerators for AI/HPC, and FPGA/adaptive computing. We will use these hands-on examples to discuss heterogeneous computing and why a CPU, GPU, NPU, or FPGA may each be the right tool for a different problem. Students will leave with practical exposure to AMD hardware and software, from ROCm and HIP to PyTorch, Ryzen AI software, and Vivado/Vitis, and a clear sense that AMD offers an entire ecosystem to learn and build with, not just the silicon underneath their applications.
- Friday, November 6 – 3:00 P.M. – 4:30 P.M.
Join Keysight and TestEquity for this interactive, hands-on activity. Using Keysight RF Spectrum Analyzers to locate radio transmitting “foxes” around the conference center. Using a map of the course and a homemade receiver, participants set out to find the transmitters, which operate in the amateur radio bands (primarily the 3.5 MHz and 144 MHz bands). The first person to find all transmitters wins the competition!
Friday, November 6
- 3:00 P.M. – 4:30 P.M. Session #1
- 4:30 P.M. – 6:00 P.M. Session #2
Kick of SLC with a fast-paced and energizing networking session designed to break the ice, spark new connections, and build collaboration across HKN chapters.
- Friday, November 6 – 3:00 P.M. – 4:00 P.M.
Join us for an exclusive tour of the University of Texas Dallas. Following round-trip transportation from the Embassy Suites, attendees will explore the ECE Department through a welcome overview from the Department Head, technical faculty research presentations, and a guided tour of the research laboratories before returning to the hotel. Maximum 50 students.
- Friday, November 6 – 2:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.
Join us for an afternoon tour to UT Arlington. Following round-trip transportation from the Embassy Suites, attendees will kick off the visit with a welcome presentation. The group will then rotate through specialized, guided tours of the campus’s NanoFab and robotics research laboratories before returning to the hotel. Maximum 30 students.
- Friday, November 6 – 2:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.
