When and how did you choose your major?

I started at UR with the intention of doing statistics and decided to take Optics 101 as an elective after hearing about the field of Optics from an upper classman in the program because it sounded pretty cool. After learning about all the cool effects in nature that can be explained by optics and all the applications and fields that rely on optics technology, I decided to stick around.  Wayne Knox was a pretty fun person to learn from!

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

I spent the summer after graduation traveling and relaxing (and going broke…) before I started the Master’s program in Optics at UA. I had a tough time deciding whether to go find a full time job or continue school, but in the end, I decided I wanted to solidify my technical knowledge more and take the opportunity to live someplace different and explore different areas of optics.

What do you do now, and why did you choose this career?

I currently do opto-mechanical design for Edmund Optics. In grad school, I focused on opto-mechanics since I thought it was an interesting cross-discipline, and there weren’t a lot of people in that field. I find design work challenging, but very rewarding, especially since I get to see some of the products I work on being used by customers and in our labs.

How do you balance your work and personal life?

I don’t know if I do… it’s not easy! I love my job, but I try to make sure my job is not my entire life. I keep up on hobbies outside of work and try different activities when the opportunities come up.

How are you still connected with the University?

The company I work for recruits from the University of Rochester, so I’ve had the opportunity to come back to campus a few times and meet current students in Optics. Also, I try to keep up reading the Rochester Review and any alumni emails that go out. I run into a lot of alumni as well at different industry shows, so it’s nice to keep up with other alums and see what they’re up to.

Why did you choose to attend the University of Rochester?

I chose the University of Rochester in large part because it offered the opportunity to take classes outside of my major (like psychology and history) with people who were actually in that major, unlike at some of the engineering schools I had applied to. Also, the cluster curriculum let me study a particular subject in more depth than if I were taking just a few core classes elsewhere.

When and how did you choose your major?

I was in the Mechanical Engineering department from the beginning of my freshman year. As a young girl, I always wanted to be an astronaut.  The engineers had the job at Space Camp of “fixing the satellite in orbit.”  I felt that Mechanical Engineering was the broadest of the engineering disciplines and would let me pursue a variety of careers should the astronaut pool be competitive (or non-existent like it is now).

What activities were you involved in as a student and what did you gain from them?

I was very involved in the Ballet Performance Group, including serving as the Vice President my junior year and President the first semester of my senior year.  We put on one large show each semester, performed in several small performances throughout the year, and participated in other campus events.  It took a lot of work to organize all of those events and people, and it taught me valuable leadership skills.  Also, it was a creative release from engineering, and my college experience wouldn’t have been the same without that group. I also did work study at the Laser Lab during my last two years as an undergraduate.  My tasks included creating a 3-D CAD representation of the architectural drawings for the new facility for the Omega EP laser. The CAD was intended to help figure out how key components of the facility would fit through the I-beams once they were in place. I’ll never forget going onto the construction site and seeing how large these I-beams looked compared with the tiny drawings on my screen. The importance of going onto the assembly floor and seeing first-hand what you’re modeling on a computer screen is something that is very fundamental to my job today.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

During the summers following my sophomore and junior years of college, I interned at a company outside of Pittsburgh that makes large industrial power cabinets. I worked with the only mechanical engineer there who was primarily a thermal engineer but also did all of the structural and vibration analysis at the company. Thermal engineering made a lot of sense to me, and I decided I would be happy pursuing it as a career. I couldn’t wait to get into the working world after graduating. Before my second semester of senior year began, I accepted a position as a Thermal Engineer at ITT Industries in Rochester, NY. Formerly a division of Kodak, they build electro-optical satellites that orbit the earth. I finally fulfilled my ambition of working in the space industry.

What do you do now, and why did you choose this career?

After about 5 1/2 years at ITT, I applied to Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, CA, which makes commercial communications satellites.  I have been at my new company for over a year now continuing to work as a Thermal Engineer. My group is responsible for designing and building hardware that will help to reject the heat dissipated in the satellite to space, testing the satellite user vacuum conditions at various temperatures, and predicting on-orbit temperatures through analysis, among other tasks. I learned many of the fundamentals of analyzing satellites at my first job and have been able to apply that knowledge to my new company, while still coming up to speed on a new technology, orbit, analysis program, and approach to satellite building.

What advice do you have for current students?

Enjoy the experience of being an undergraduate, and take advantage of all of the extracurricular activities while you can.  If you can find an internship or academic summer program in your field, I think you can gain insight and perspective into how the fundamentals that you learn in class are applied outside of the classroom.

Why did you choose to attend the University of Rochester?

Scholarships

When and how did you choose your major?

In high school, I studied overseas and majored in sciences. It seemed like a good idea.

What activities were you involved in as a student and what did you gain from them?

Crew. I gained discipline and also leadership, organizational, and teamwork skills.

SACC. I got my first taste of management and business.

What resources did you use on campus that you recommend current students use?

Student activities

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

I moved to Seattle to look for work and to be an athlete. You only live once.

What do you do now and why did you choose this career?

I am a market research analyst. I fell into this after graduate school – it is not where I see myself in 5 years. Also, I do small business consulting with my wife.

What skills, tools, or knowledge from your major have been most useful to you since graduation?

Basic engineering skills. I designed consumer products for a few years.

How do you balance your work and personal life?

Aggressively.

Where would you like to be in five years?

Managing a division of my company.

How are you still connected with the University?

Newsletters

What advice do you have for current students?

Do those things today that in 20 years you will be happy that you did. Your career will change several times before you are 30. Start your job search early. Go to graduate school.

Why did you choose to attend the University of Rochester?

The moment I arrived on campus to visit, it just felt right, I loved the campus and the people I met; I knew that I belonged there.

When and how did you choose your major?

I chose mechanical engineering during orientation week freshman year.  I described my love for math to one of the engineering professors, and he said; “Why don’t you try mechanical engineering?”  So I did, and it was a perfect fit!

What activities were you involved in as a student, and what did you gain from them?

I played varsity softball for four years, and it was a wonderful experience.  I made some incredibly strong friendships and learned a lot about hard work, determination, and leadership.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

I went to graduate school for a master’s degree.  I decided on that path because unlike a lot of my classmates, I was not “burnt-out;” I was upset to be leaving the schooling environment, so I didn’t!

How are you still connected with the University?

I get newsletters and mailings from the engineering school, athletic department, and the university itself. I attend alumni events in the Boston area where I currently live.  I attend Meliora Week every few years, and I give back to the University every year.

What advice do you have for current students?

Give it your all, no doubt it will be hard in the moment, and at times, you won’t want to, but in the end, it will be worth it. That goes for work and play!!

Name:

What do you do now, and why did you choose this career?

I recently founded Artillery Games, and through the company, we are trying to build the next generation of browser based games.  There are three of us that founded the company, and all of us met by working at Google together.  We’ve raised an investment round already and are really excited about what we’re doing!

Prior to Artillery, I spent four years at Facebook working on partnerships and implementing them technically where I was a partnership engineer.  Likewise, I did something similar at Google for two years prior to that.  After college, I worked as a sales engineer at an optical engineering company for a year before ending up at Google in Silicon Valley.

I do what I do because I love it — I’m the luckiest guy on earth.  Technology is something that I do for fun.  In high school, when cool kids were probably going to parties, I was disassembling my computer or installing Linux.  To me, my job isn’t a job, but something I would do even if I didn’t get paid to do it.  I’m so thankful that the whole Internet thing became popular because I’m not exactly sure what I would have done with my life otherwise.

What activities were you involved in as a student, and what did you gain from them?

I founded a software development firm called Treosoft in college.  We built the now infamous Campus Club Connection.  It was a great learning experience of how to build a startup, even if we weren’t ultimately able to make it successful. Also, I founded the Business and Investment Club and played squash.  All of these were really fun and kept me busy.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

After Treosoft failed, I had a bit of a difficult couple months.  Ultimately, I took a sales-engineering job at an optics company in Pittsburgh, PA while trying to build another software startup in my free time.  After about a year, my brother referred me to Google and found that there were sales-engineers, so I applied and ended up with an offer a couple weeks later and moved out to the Valley!

What skills, tools, or knowledge from your major have been most useful to you since graduation?

Day to day, I don’t use the specific skills from my degrees, but most important are the tools that we learned of “how to learn.”  Meaning, the incredibly challenging problems we faced in college aren’t any different from trying to build a company.  It just takes patience, resolve, time, and tons of hard work.  My freshman year, I was pretty lazy and unmotivated, but once optics started to get really challenging my sophomore year, it taught me how to step up, learn how to work hard, and love it.

How do you balance your work and personal life?

It’s always a challenge, but I tend to burn-out easily, so I try to give my job 40-50 hours a week of focused time, meaning, completely focused with no distractions, and when I come home, I’m completely separated from the office.  In this way, I’m able to recharge.  I’m probably still “thinking” about things, but that time is for me to decompress and do other things.

Going to the gym and spending time with family have been important things that help keep my life in balance also.  I’d encourage students to develop hobbies in college that they can continue the rest of their lives.  Balance is important.

How are you still connected with the University?

I have hosted alumni get-togethers in the Bay Area in the past, and I have helped interview students.  Now days, I try to attend all of the alumni get togethers.  It’s great to meet all of the bright young students graduating from the alma matar.

What advice do you have for current students?

Tough question … I’d say, “explore everything that you can, and see if you can find something that you love.  Don’t chase money, but chase your passion.  If you can work on something that you love every day, it doesn’t feel like work anymore.  If you happen to become successful at it, that is great, but even if you don’t, you just spent your life working on something that you love!”

Why did you choose to attend the University of Rochester?

I chose to attend the University of Rochester because of the unique curriculum structure and excellent engineering programs. I wanted to have the freedom to explore other fields of study while also focusing on engineering. I was looking for a school that could offer me a lot of course options and still have small class sizes.

What did you do immediately after graduation? How did you decide to take that path?

Immediately after graduation, I enrolled in graduate school at Georgia Tech. I’ve always had a passion for propulsion technologies, especially internal combustion engines.  I wanted to learn more about them, so I chose to go straight to graduate school. I completed my Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in fluid and thermal sciences in 2010.

What do you do now and why did you choose this career?

I am currently part of the Robert Bosch Corporation’s Management Development Program for Engineers. This program is two years long and allows me to work in four separate locations around the world while I try out different roles within the company. At the moment, I work on combustion development for high performance BMW diesel engines at our Automotive Division in Stuttgart, Germany.

What skills, tools, or knowledge from your major have been most useful to you since graduation?

The courses I took in heat transfer and thermodynamics at the U of R have been most useful to me in my career. They provide me with an excellent theoretical foundation that helps me understand the fundamentals of advanced engine designs.

How do you balance your work and personal life?

I balance my work and personal life by staying very organized and strictly separating work from my personal life. I’ve found it very helpful to work out after a long day and take that time to decompress before spending time with friends.  It’s important to clear your mind, so the next time you return to work, you feel refreshed and alert.

What advice do you have for current students?

My advice is to follow your passions, and never stop learning new things. People discover new passions every day, and it’s important to explore courses at the U of R that are out of your general field of study. You all have a unique opportunity at this University which allows you that freedom. Many schools do not provide such flexibility.