The Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers’ (SASE) second annual Western Regional Conference was held in Price Center’s East Ballroom this Saturday, Feb. 23. The conference was SASE’s largest event, and drew a total of over 140 participants from San Diego, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Las Vegas, Stanford, Colorado, and Merced. Attendance to the event doubled from last year.

The program was free and open to members of any major and ethnicity; membership into the organization in both regional and national levels is also free. However, the conference costs upwards of 10,000 dollars, most of which came from fundraising across all participating schools with additional contributions from ERC, Muir, and AS.

The conference was planned months in advanced beginning with an application to host the event at UCSD. An intern program as well as SASE leadership provided the manpower to run the conference. The organization also has 3 faculty advisors; however, none of them could attend. The conference itself was composed of speakers, workshops, and professional networking hours with a variety of company representatives, including the CFO of General Electric and representatives from NASA.

“We have a marketing side, a business side, and people from all different professions coming”, President of UCSD SASE Tiffany Chou said, “The companies give students exposure to a variety of different things and it allows students to explore what they want to do in the future.”

Speakers from various professions made up an important part of SASE’s conference. Michael Comberiate, the keynote speaker from NASA, stressed the power of innovative thinking.

“There are a lot of intelligent people, a lot of people who work very hard, and they all do good things,” Michael said, “but the breakthroughs are lead by the people who think outside the box.”