Amy Marcott

Overloaded with Work? Your Biggest Asset Could be an MIT Student

by Amy Marcott on April 25, 2012

There just aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything your company needs to get done. But give them four short weeks and MIT students can offer impressive results on some of those more challenging projects.

Here are four examples, written by alumni, of how their companies sought out students for a win-win experience: students discovered real-world applications of their classroom learnings while alumni benefitted from the special expertise students brought to their work.

This is part of a series of posts from MIT students and alumni who were involved in the 2012 Student/Alumni Externship Program, which connected current students to alumni in workplaces worldwide during MIT’s Independent Activities Period. Alumni, learn how to get involved. This is just one way for alumni to interact with MIT students. Learn about other opportunities.

Guest blogger: Adam Blake MBA ’11, marketing director, ThriveHive
My initial exposure to the MIT Student-Alumni Externship Program came as a participant during my first semester as an MBA student. I instantly fell in love with the program because of the opportunity it provided to gain exposure to not only a new industry, but also a new culture, a challenging project, and everything else that comes from working in a new company.

From left: Max Faingezicht MBA '11, Deborah Chen '14, Xenia Antipova '13, Brent Wu MBA '13, Adam Blake MBA '11.

From left: Max Faingezicht MBA '11, Deborah Chen '14, Xenia Antipova '13, Brent Wu MBA '13, and Adam Blake MBA '11.

Fast forward a couple years, and when the opportunity to be a sponsor for the program arose, my classmate and coworker Max Faingezicht MBA ’11 and I jumped at the chance to sponsor some current students. After the MBA program we both joined a small-business-marketing software startup in Cambridge called ThriveHive, and we knew there were an almost limitless number of projects we could put together for current students. We posted a couple of relatively broad job descriptions to try to attract the most creative and motivated students. After meeting with a few applicants, we designed projects that we felt would match the passion of the students while simultaneously meeting the real needs of our startup. We don’t have the resources to waste time with students just hanging around the office, so everyone had to be working on important projects.

Our externs were Brent Wu MBA ’13, Deborah Chen ’14, and Xenia Antipova ’13. Brent, a first-year Sloanie, made use of his business background to put together a go-to market kit for one of our target markets. Deborah, a Course 6 sophomore who has already acquired some strong database skills, tackled a very challenging project centered on optimizing the complex backend of our software. Xenia, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering with a minor in architecture, used her analytical design skills to devise better ways for us to visualize our customer facing data.

Startups never have enough bandwidth to get everything done on the wish list, and finding enough smart and motivated people to solve problems is always a challenge. With the addition of our externs, January was full of energy and progress. Three or four weeks is a short amount of time for students to come up to speed and actually accomplish something, but it’s absolutely doable. We’re looking forward to participating again next year.

Guest blogger: Vesta Marks ’00, portfolio manager, UCM Partners, LP
This was the third time UCM Partners has participated in the Student/Alumni Externship Program, and I can say with confidence that this experience was our best thus far. The most impactful difference was that we were able to host two students this year—Diana Hsieh ’13 and Michael Farid ’14—as opposed to just one.

From left to right Vesta Marks '00, Course 18; Diana Hsieh '13, Course 14; Michael Farid '14, Course 2; Jay Menozzi '85, Course 6; and Boris Peresechensky.

From left: Vesta Marks '00, Course 18; Diana Hsieh '13, Course 14; Michael Farid '14, Course 2; Jay Menozzi '85, Course 6; and Boris Peresechensky.

Within the first two days, I was reminded how quickly MIT students self-organize into a team dynamic that fosters collaboration, idea sharing, and specialization. This ethos propelled our externs along the learning curve much more quickly than if they would have been working singly. It was impressive to see how quickly the team-oriented approach took root and observing it provided me with a pleasant reminder of the culture that exists on campus. [click to continue…]

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Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—April 21, 2012

by Amy Marcott on April 21, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

Full moon and the Seine, Pont Neuf, Paris (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his website.

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To Alumni, MIT Students Provide Wistful, Energetic Presence

by Amy Marcott on April 19, 2012

in Alumni Life,IAP,Student Life

Guest blogger: Brad Edelman ’93, CTO, Fingerprint Digital, Inc.

Grad student Carrie Cai with teammates at the Fingerprint Digital office in San Francisco.

When I was an undergraduate at MIT, I learned a lot from my coursework but look back with a special fondness on my UROP and summer internships. MIT excels in the theoretical, and students who combine that with some hands-on experience and real-world pragmatism make amazing employees when they enter the workplace. As such, it’s always been a joy for me to host MIT externships and summer internships. This IAP was no exception. At Fingerprint Digital, we hosted Carrie Cai, currently earning her PhD in computer science at MIT and already an MA in education from Stanford. What an amazing extern for our company in the mobile educational games space!

In just three weeks, Carrie had a wide range of experiences. She worked with our engineers to understand our software development kit (SDK) and did a great job improving our written developer integration guide. At the same time, she developed from start to finish a Hangman word game to use as a sample application to include with the SDK. She also had the opportunity to attend outside meetings with our development partners and gain insight into how technical decisions are influenced by business interests and economic realities. And she offered lots of feedback and ideas for improvement in both the UI/UX and curriculum in our upcoming title, Kid Explorer. She even got exposure to our meetings with current and potential investors.

It was refreshing to experience Carrie’s youthful idealism and can-do attitude. We had a fun discussion where Carrie couldn’t understand why basic audio/video capabilities are taking so long to become true cross-browser, cross-platform standards. Frankly, she’s right. It’s a bit hard to believe that these things can take years when on a technical basis, a solution is not only within reach but already robustly implemented. And we could go from there to talking about Fourier analysis and speech recognition and even a tangential detour into cryptography. She says I remind her of the intense MIT undergraduates—to which I say, right back at her! It makes me reminisce for those days when information came at me like a fire hose. MIT keep up the good work!

The externship flew by, and we took Carrie out to lunch on her last day; we wanted to send her off with a little celebration. We got back from lunch at about 2:00 p.m. and she decided to start a new project. Now that’s initiative! In her last four hours in the office, Carrie produced a video showing step-by-step in XCode how easy it is to add the Fingerprint platform to an iOS application. Her idea, her script, her production—and done in a matter of hours on her last day. The power of youth and the amazing capabilities of an MIT student—what a combination!

Carrie became not just a productive contributor but also a true member of our team. We’re really going to miss having her around.

*Editor’s note: This is part of a series of posts from MIT students and alumni who were involved in the 2012 Student/Alumni Externship Program, which connected current students to alumni in workplaces worldwide during MIT’s Independent Activities Period. Alumni, learn how to get involved. This is just one way for alumni to interact with MIT students. Learn about other opportunities.

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Nuclear Engineering Major Embraces His Inner Performance Poet

by Amy Marcott on April 16, 2012

in Alumni Life,Arts

Kealoha (Steven Wong) '99. Photo: Ronen Zilberman.

In honor of National Poetry Month, here’s a look at some slam poetry from Kealoha (Steven Wong) ’99.

Kealoha majored in nuclear engineering with a minor in writing and while a student, he interned at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Upon graduating, he changed gears and worked as a management consultant in San Francisco. One night in 2000 he attended his first poetry slam and his life changed.

Disillusioned with the corporate world, Kealoha began focusing his attention on poetry. By the end of 2001, he had left his job, moved back home to Hawai`i, and was sleeping on his brother’s couch. He began sharing his poetry at open mics and in 2003 founded HawaiiSlam and First Thursdays, a monthly poetry slam that quickly grew to attract upwards of 500 people—and to become the largest registered poetry slam competition in the world.

According to his online bio, he is the first poet in Hawai`i’s history to perform at a governor’s inauguration, and in 2010 he was selected as a master artist for a National Endowment for the Arts program. In the seven years that he has represented his state at the National Poetry Slam, Kealoha has performed on the finals stage four times, was ranked in the top ten of the nation’s best poets in 2007, and was honored as a National Slam Legend in 2010.

These days, he lives in Honolulu and still makes his living as a performance poet by touring the world, performing in music concerts, and visiting Hawai`i’s schools, libraries, and community centers.

Watch Kealoha perform “Recess,” which was recorded live at HawaiiSlam’s First Thursdays on February 4th, 2010. Want to learn more about him? Read Kealoha’s life story and view more videos of him in action.

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Students with Energy, Meet Alumni in Energy

by Amy Marcott on April 15, 2012

in Alumni Life,Energy,IAP,Student Life

Energy research has become an increasingly important part of the MIT culture, and with students now pursuing minors in energy studies, they are often on the lookout for practical ways to use what they’ve learned. Some of the most fruitful experiences happen with the help of alumni.

Here are three stories of alumni welcoming MIT students into their energy-focused companies to learn about different aspects of the industry and the benefits the students offered in return.

Guest blogger: Jon Garrity ’11, product strategy specialist, GE Energy
Digital Energy, GE Energy’s Atlanta-based smart grid business, hosted two externs over IAP. Fan Wei ’12 and Jorge Moreno, a grad student in the System Design and Management program, spent four weeks developing analytics around distributed solar energy. Fan’s mathematics background combined with Jorge’s considerable experience in the energy industry made them a formidable team. The first day we gave them project and company background, and by day two, they were off and running.

From left: Externs Fan Wei '12, grad student Jorge Moreno, and host Jon Garrity '11.

Our utility customers have challenges integrating distributed generation (for example, rooftop solar installations) into the grid. It isn’t easy to see how much energy all these distributed resources are generating at a given time. The intermittency of certain distributed generation can lead to reliability issues, like flickering. Fan and Jorge, in their short time with us, did an extensive literature review, collected data, and built multiple models for our customers. These models will provide utilities with information on distributed solar generation, improving planning and customer engagement.

With only four weeks to complete the project, the team spent many hours fine-tuning their models and finishing their final presentation. The externship culminated in a presentation to our Smart Grid Solutions business leader. There were jokes before the meeting that “MIT’s reputation is on the line,” but Fan and Jorge delivered an excellent pitch and left everyone impressed. Fortunately, Fan and Jorge were able to experience some culture too—enjoying real Southern barbeque and touring downtown Atlanta. Both agreed that Georgia is a great place to enjoy IAP, especially during one 71-degree afternoon.

Having participated in the externship program as an extern several years ago, it was great to stay involved in the program from the employer side. Both Fan and Jorge jumped right into the project and had a very productive four weeks. We’re looking forward to staying in touch and also to hosting more externs next year.

Guest blogger: Jacqueline Berger ’89, president of APPRISE
“Welcome to APPRISE!” we said to Kimberly Li ’12 when she walked into our office in Princeton, New Jersey, on a cold January morning. We had been looking forward to introducing Kimberly to our staff and engaging her in various aspects of our evaluation research. Little did we know how much of an impact Kimberly would have in our office in such a short time. [click to continue…]

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Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—April 14, 2012

by Amy Marcott on April 14, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

A man in the Dominican Republic (© Owen Franken).

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The Wind, Like You’ve Never Seen it Before

by Amy Marcott on April 9, 2012

in Arts,Design,Media,Modern Geekhood

Wind patterns from March 14, 2012.

Media Lab alumna Fernanda Viégas SM ’00, PhD ’05 and Martin Wattenberg, who lead Google’s “Big Picture” visualization research group in Cambridge, have created another stunning depiction of data—this time of wind currently flowing over the US. Wind map is quite mesmerizing once you start watching. Data is accurate to the hour.

Viégas and Wattenberg have created quite a name for themselves in the data visualization community. Viégas started her career looking at online communities. She joined with Wattenberg in 2003 to visualize Wikipedia, a project that revealed the self-healing nature of the community-generated encyclopedia. Prior to their gig at Google, the pair led IBM’s Visual Communication Lab, where they created the ground-breaking public visualization platform Many Eyes, then cofounded Flowing Media, Inc., a visualization studio focused on media and consumer-oriented projects.

They have also exhibited visualization-based artwork in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art as well as the London Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Check out their collection of informative and artistic visualizations, including Web Seer, which plots the frequency of questions on Google (starting with “Why doesn’t he” or “Why doesn’t she…” for example) and Luscious, which distills magazine ads for luxury brands into abstract compositions.

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Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—April 7, 2012

by Amy Marcott on April 7, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

A person at a midnight service at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after the death of Pope John Paul II, April 2, 2005. The Cathedral was filled to capacity for the midnight mass (© Owen Franken/Corbis).

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Alumnus Finds Challenging an MIT Student to Be…Well…Challenging

by Amy Marcott on April 2, 2012

in Alumni Life,IAP,Student Life

Guest blogger: Orlando Soto ’05

Orlando Soto '05 guides Vanessa Treviño '13 in a project.

When I learned that MIT was reaching out to alumni and trying to match undergraduate students with externship opportunities, I jumped at opportunity to serve as a host. I knew Goddard Technologies, the engineering and design consulting company I work for in Boston’s north shore, would provide exactly the kind of fast-paced, dynamic environment that MIT undergrads need in order to prevent their high-octane neurons from turning to mush.

From the beginning, I was very excited about the quality of all the applicants in the program. The difficult part was actually choosing a “lucky” first-choice candidate from the pool of excellent undergraduates—I actually ended up staying in touch with some other undergrads just in case we have any summer internship openings. In the end, Vanessa Treviño ’13 became our extern.

I had warned Vanessa that we do things a little differently here at Goddard – we would load her up with responsibility until she cried uncle, we would encourage her to lead discussions and participate in brainstorms, and we would expect her to design and build prototypes and then show us how awesome they actually work. None of this seemed to faze Vanessa, and I really felt like I did not have to hold back once we were in the throes of engineering and design.

The first project I had her work on involved putting some of her engineering theory to real-world use: calculating maximum bending stress and deflection of a medical device under different loading configurations. True to MIT MechE nature, she didn’t even break a sweat when tackling straight theory. “OK, so you’re good with numbers. Now go write the report,” I said to Vanessa. Off she went and wrote the foundations of a well-written report that came back exceedingly well reviewed by our client.

Vanessa Treviño '13 hard at work on a project.

Vanessa Treviño '13 hard at work on a prototype.

So I decided to challenge Vanessa on a front where I thought she would be a little raw: practical engineering in the context of actual product design and development.

No compartmentalized academic problems here—make too many assumptions for the purposes of framing your little academic “beam-bending” problem and you’re sunk: So it’s a structural beam in bending…did you consider friction? What about fatigue strength of the material? Did you forget to consider that this operates in a saline environment? Did you remember to consider coatings and finishes that may let you get away with a material that would otherwise be unusable in its raw state? What about wear characteristics? Oh, and you do realize that this component is part of a real product which will be sold for profit, so you didn’t design it out of super-awesome-expensivite—did you?

These considerations threw Vanessa a little more off-balance, but she was able to learn and adapt very quickly, even making some suggestions I had not yet considered.

The realization that in engineering practice there could be hundreds of correct answers that are each different in terms of how well they address the underlying problem whereas in many academic mechanical engineering classes you are required to show your work such that the path to the one correct solution is documented was the one lesson I hoped to teach Vanessa as part of this externship. Sometimes finding the best answer requires some mental engineering gymnastics that can only come with practical knowledge and experience (read: mistakes).

I think she got it.