I am a phd student in computer science, starting in september my last year.
The next week I will join a conference not far from my home university, where I am not presenting any paper. The main area of the conference is pretty close to my phd topic, and there will be there most of the top professors of the area.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk with them, present them my work and share a couples of ideas, but I have some doubts on how to engage them and on what to share with them, in particular:
- Even if I have read some of their papers, I have no specific questions on them, and I don't know if it makes sense to read a bunch of paper in this days just to find a viable reason to talk with them.
- A possibility would be to write them saying that they are important for my phd and I would like to share with them my research, but I don't know if this is going to interest them.
- Last I have some unpublished ideas that I am planning to work on the next year. Is it risky to share these ideas with them?
Needless to say, the main purpose to meet them for me are:
- Find possible coauthors
- Find possible post-doc locations