Homayoon Kazerooni is invited to speak at many events every semester. Many of those he has to turn down. However, the professor of Mechanical Engineering at U-C Berkeley said that as soon as he read the invitation to speak at the University’s Symposium on Control and Modeling of Biomedical Systems last Friday, he was sure he would accept.

“There is no way I would have said no,” Kazerooni said. “It was the first time I had ever been invited by a student body to speak; usually invitations come from professors or staff.”

The symposium, a completely student-run event on biomedical systems, was held Thursday and Friday at the Beckman Institute.

Kazerooni is currently working to develop a robotic technology that allows people to compensate for their inability to walk. He said he was honored to speak at the symposium.

“I felt lucky,” he said. “I actually love to do this stuff. One should not forget that these students are tomorrow’s leaders and I love passing on what I’ve learned to help them move forward.”

Along with Kazerooni, eleven other prominent researchers in the field were invited and gave talks about their projects.

One of the organizers of the symposium, Bobby Gregg, said all of the speakers exceeded his expectations.

“The quality of all speakers and presentations was outstanding,” said Gregg, who is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University. “We kind of expected that, given what we knew about them, but they were also very enthusiastic and very welcoming speakers for all the student participants.”

Gregg said he was also very pleased with the atmosphere of the event.

“The whole point of the symposium was for it to be a more interactive, more intimate setting for students to get to know high profile researchers,” Gregg said. “I think it succeeded.”

Earlier in the week, the organizers were worried about their speakers being able to attend. Several of the researchers’ flights from Europe had been postponed due to the ash from the volcano in Iceland.

“Even with all the worrying and everything that we did, the airlines in Europe finally started doing flights, so all speakers were able to attend,” said David Hoelzle, another student organizer and Ph.D candidate in Mechanical Engineering.

Overall, the members of the organizing committee said the symposium went smoother than expected.

“We’ve not only gotten compliments from faculty here, but a lot of the invited attendees also commented on how much they enjoyed it,” Hoelzle said.

Videos of the speakers’ talks are expected to be uploaded to the Internet by next week for those who could not attend.