2015 Olin Outcomes

ENGINEERINNOVATORS FOR A BETTER WORLD

OUTCOMES 2015

graduate school stats

37% 76%

are in the STEM fields

44%

of those in STEM fields working toward a PhD are NSF award recipients

26%

attend or plan to attend MIT, Stanford or Harvard

31% Fulbright success rate

2

of all alumni have gone, are going or plan to go (have been accepted) to grad school

50%

of the first three classes have gone or are going to grad school

top graduate schools Harvard University MIT Stanford University Carnegie Mellon University University of California Berkeley Cornell University University of Washington

3

TRANSFORMING PASSION INTO PURPOSE

4

“I AM MOST GRATEFUL FOR THE CLASSMATES I LEARNED WITH— AND FROM—WHILE AT OLIN. I PARTICULARLY CHERISH THE GROUP OF WOMEN I GOT TO KNOW. WORKING IN INDUSTRIES WITH STILTED GENDER RATIOS AND AN ABSENCE OF ROLE MODELS, THIS GROUP HAS BEEN INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO ME.” Meena Vembusubramanian ’08 MBA Candidate at Harvard Business School

Following graduation Meena went to work for Rockwell Automation—the company that sponsored her senior capstone/SCOPE project. She was soon selected for a twoyear leadership development rotational program, where her roles included Field Quality Lead, Customer Quality Engineer, Hardware Engineer and Product

Marketing Specialist. Upon completion of the program she worked full-time as a Product Marketing Specialist. In 2012 Meena left Rockwell to join Kiva Systems as a Systems Engineer, and in the fall of 2013 she returned to her studies at Harvard Business School. While attending Harvard Meena has interned in product management at Google.

5

In the five years since graduating from Olin, Greg Marra has already worked for the two biggest names in Silicon Valley and has been called “one of the most influential people in the news business” by the New York Times.

6

Greg Marra ’10 Product Manager, Facebook After a successful internship as a program manager at Microsoft during the summer of 2009, Greg accepted his first fulltime job as an Associate Product Manager for Google, where he worked on Google+ pages, profiles, streams and communities. In

August of 2012, Greg left Google to join Facebook, where he is quickly building a reputation for being the man behind the algorithm for Facebook’s News Feeds. Greg was named one of Forbes magazine’s 2015 ‘30 Under 30’ in the “Media Makers” category.

Jay Gantz ’06 MD/PhD Candidate, University of Washington During his tenure at Olin, Jay never let opportunity pass him by. He cross-registered at both Babson College and Wellesley College, taking classes in French, Biology, Art History, Philosophy and English, among other things. He also spent a summer studying Organic Chemistry at Harvard University, a semester abroad studying Chemistry and Totalitarianism while doing research in Bio-organic Chemistry at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

During his senior year, Jay was a visiting researcher in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at MIT. He returned to Switzerland as a Fulbright Scholar in 2006/7, continuing his earlier work in Bio-organic Chemistry. In July 2007 he enrolled in the joint MD/ PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he graduated in May 2015 and went on to pursue a residency in Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery.

Johannah (Itescu) van der Plas ’07 Manufacturing Technology Engineering Manager, GE Aviation With graduation coming up Johannah faced a dilemma.

She’d been introduced to, and fell in love with, so many aspects of engineering that she didn’t want to have to narrow her focus. Thanks to Olin’s Society of Women Engineers chapter, she was connected to GE. Soon after graduation, she started in the Edison Engineering Development program, which allowed her to gain experience in many different functions of jet engine design, analysis, manufacturing, and testing. While working full time, she received an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University

of Cincinnati in 2010. Looking to gain broad corporate experience, she worked in a customer support role for GE Aviation at Airbus in Germany for a couple of years.

Johannah has received more than 15 awards and nominations for her creative contributions, including GE’s esteemed Product Innovation Award and an “inventor” credit in a patent application. She now serves as a Manufacturing Technology Engineering Manager, leading a team that develops and industrializes turbine blade manufacturing technologies that improve engine durability and reduce fuel consumption.

7

“FOR ME, THE MAGIC OF ENGINEERING IS A TEAM WORKING TOGETHER TO BUILD SOMETHING AMAZING. OLIN’S HANDS-ON CURRICULUM PUT THAT EXPERIENCE FRONT AND CENTER FROM DAY ONE, AND I’VE BEEN HOOKED EVER SINCE.” Andy Barry ’10 PhD Candidate, MIT CSAIL

8

During an internship at Kiva Systems the summer before his junior year, Andy made the observation that the engineers who “did the coolest work” were the ones who had PhDs. This inspired him to go to graduate school after Olin, and now Andy

is pursuing his PhD at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. There he is a member of the Robot Locomotion Group and is working on developing control systems for making small aircraft fly through dense forests at high speeds.

9

WHAT EMPLOYERS ARE SAYING...

Top Employers Microsoft athenahealth Google Boeing Rockwell Automation United States Navy Intuit Twitter Apple Facebook

10

“Olin graduates bring more than just a top-notch education to athenahealth. They are thoughtful, socially responsible, and enlightened. Olin graduates are the perfect complement to our vision of making health care work as it should.”

Evan O’Meara athenahealth “Pocket Gems really loves working with Olin grads because as a startup, we are looking for generalists who are able to dive in and solve diverse problems in a collaborative environment, which is exactly what Olin teaches. We also love analytical people with technical experience, even if they aren’t working in a technical role here, so Olin alums are a great fit.”

Brian Shih ’07 Pocket Gems

$78,074*

* average salary of classes 2012-14 (6 months after graduation)

Tess Edmonds ’11 Design Facilitator and Consultant in Sustainable Design Having served as a Teaching Assistant for Olin’s Affordable Design & Entrepreneurship class, which she helped create, Tess went on to teach at Creigton University following her graduation from Olin. As an Assistant Director and Instructor, Tess again launched a new undergraduate program at Creighton, the Energy Technology Program, where she created

and taught six new design courses and labs and received the Iggy Award for “Outstanding Freshman Mentor.” In 2013 Tess began her career as a Design Facilitator and Consultant. She has since done projects for the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute as well as the MIT IDEAS Program, leading diverse teams through design-thinking workshops.

11

Brandon Rowan ’07 Assembly Manager, Caterpillar Brandon served as a Mechanical Test Engineer for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems after graduating from Olin. He enrolled in MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations program in 2010, where he was an MIT

Presidential Fellow and earned his MBA and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. He then joined Caterpillar in July of 2012 as a Manufacturing Project Engineer and today serves as an Assembly Manager for the company.

“ONE OF THE MOST VALUABLE THINGS WE LEARNED AT OLIN WAS HOW TO BE COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE, ESPECIALLY SINCE THAT’S A LOT OF WHAT STARTING A COMPANY IS ABOUT.” Jon McKay ’13, with Tim Ryan, and Jialiya Huang ’13 Co-Founders, Technical Machine

12

In September of 2013, Tim Ryan and Jialiya Huang, in collaboration with classmates Jon McKay, Kelsey Breseman and Eric Kolker, launched a $50,000 crowdfunding campaign around Tessel, a microcontroller that can easily create webconnected devices using JavaScript. Within hours, their fundraising goal was met and eventually quadrupled, with more than 1,000 backers pledging close to $200,000. Soon after, Technical Machine raised over

$1M of seed funding, opened the first Technical Machine office in Cambridge, Mass., and hired fellow Oliner Kevin Mehall. The following spring the team moved its headquarters to Berkeley, Calif., and took on three Olin interns, Nathan Lintz ’15, Evan Simpson ’15 and Paige Cote ’16.

In January 2015, the company announced international resellers in Japan, China, Australia and the UK. Tessel 2 was announced in March, and today the company is worth about $4 million.

13

14

“OLIN TAUGHT ME TO JUMP RIGHT IN AND TACKLE PROJECTS EVEN IF I’M NOT ENTIRELY CONFIDENT IN MY OWN ABILITIES. THAT WAS REALLY IMPORTANT WHEN I WROTE MY MASTER’S THESIS (I’D NEVER WRITTEN AN OPERA STUDIES PAPER BEFORE!), AND IT CONTINUES TO SERVE ME WELL IN MY YEAR OF INDEPENDENT RESEARCH.” Ilana Walder-Biesanz ’14 Research Fellow, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany

A college graduate at 19, Ilana was the first Olin student to be named a Gates-Cambridge Scholar. This led her to Cambridge University, where she pursued a Masters in European Literature and Culture, with a focus on theater and opera studies. After touring Europe, performing in more than a dozen plays, completing her

Masters and turning down an Erasmus Mundus scholarship, she accepted a Fulbright Scholarship and spent the 201415 academic year studying the use of technology in theater and opera at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Germany. Soon she will return to the tech world to join Yahoo as an Associate Product Manager.

15

“OLIN PREPARED ME FOR A WORLD WHERE LEARNING ISN’T BOUND TO A CLASS PERIOD AND ANSWERS AREN’T IN A TEXTBOOK. I HOPE TO CONTINUE TO WORK WITH OTHERS TO HELP STUDENTS GAIN ACCESS TO HIGH-QUALITY LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES. MOST IMPORTANTLY, I HAVE OLIN TO THANK FOR PREPARING ME TO WORK DOING WHAT I LOVE.” Marco Morales ’11 Designer at edX

16

Following a successful SCOPE team endeavor for Autodesk’s Education Group, Marco went to work for Alleyoop, a division of Pearson Education, as a Product Designer. After just over a year, he left to join edX as a Designer.

In the meantime Marco also worked on his own educational

start-up company, Bright-Loop, where he built an application that helps K-6 grade teachers collect qualitative student notes, facilitating the transition of these notes into goals and reminders, all of which is aimed at individualizing student learning needs.

17

18

“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I LEARNED AT OLIN WAS HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH PEOPLE WHO AREN’T ENGINEERS. IN GENERAL OLINERS ARE REALLY GREAT AT COMMUNICATING ACROSS DISCIPLINES BECAUSE WE AREN’T SILOED.” Maia Bittner ’11 Co-founder & CTO, RocksBox

Maia’s passion for start-ups and entrepreneurship stems from her love of creating something from nothing.

After getting her feet wet as a technical cofounder of The Hikery in 2011, she went on to work for Pierce Washington Consulting as a Software Engineer in 2012. Shortly

thereafter, Maia went on to co-found RocksBox, a startup in downtown San Francisco that makes it easy and affordable for women to feel great about the way they look. Maia is RocksBox’s CTO, managing the engineering team and setting the technical vision for the company.

19

top summer intern employers athenahealth Barrett Technology Blue Origin Boeing Bose Boston Scientific GE Google IBM Intuit Microsoft MITRE NeuroScouting Northrop Grumman Pivotal Protedyne Raytheon SoftArtisans

20

top summer research labs Caltech Cornell University Harvard University IMEC - Belgium Johns Hopkins University MIT Stanford UCLA University of Maryland University of Washington

Laura Stupin ’07 Senior Process Engineer, Pivot, Ltd. During her time at Olin, Laura co-founded the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) and helped to facilitate the program for five years. In 2009 she became a graduate student at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in the United Arab Emirates, where she focused her research on village energy solutions. In 2012 she joined Waste

Enterprisers in Accra, Ghana, as the lead process engineer to innovate a renewable fuel made from sewage. The company evolved and changed its name to Pivot, and she moved with them to Mombasa, Kenya. In 2015, she led demo installations in three African cities and moved to Kigali, Rwanda, to commission Pivot’s first commercial-scale fuel factory.

Sylvie (Boiteau) Stacy ’07 Corporate Medical Director at NaphCare, Inc. Following her graduation from Olin, Sylvie went on to attend the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where she received her MD in 2011. She then began a postdoctoral residency at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons at Bassett Medical Center. At the same time, she pursued her Masters in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg

School of Public Health, where she graduated in 2013. During her time at Johns Hopkins, Sylvie completed a training program for board certification in general preventive medicine. Today she serves as a Corporate Medical Director for NaphCare, Inc., where she is responsible for providing clinical leadership and oversight for healthcare operations across the country.

21

“OLIN CHALLENGES US TO THINK OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE FACING A PROBLEM, TRY TO UNDERSTAND THEIR NEEDS AND SEE WHAT SOLUTIONS MAY FIT.” Jeff Satwicz ’06 Product Manager, BigBelly Solar

22

As a member of Olin’s first incoming class, Jeff immediately put his engineering skills to good use. After meeting Babson graduate Jim Poss at an on-campus event in 2002, the two set out to conceptualize and create the first BigBelly solar trash compactor. Jeff continued to work on BigBelly 20-30 hours a week during his four years at Olin. Upon graduation, Jeff officially joined BigBelly Solar

as a Mechanical Engineer. In March of 2014 he was promoted to Product Manager, serving as an integral part of the engineering team and assisting with developing the marketing strategy, identifying customers, fulfilling messaging and project requirements, as well as making decisions about hardware.

Today BigBelly Solar has 30,000 compactors in 47 countries worldwide.

23

FOR MORE STORIES ABOUT OLIN ALUMNI, CHECK OUT THE POST-GRADUATE PLANNING BLOG AT olin.edu/blog/career-and-graduate-stories/

POST GRADUATE PLANNING Sally J. Phelps Director 781.292.2281 sally.phelps@olin.edu Aarti Chellakere Assistant Director 781.292.2204 aarti.chellakere@olin.edu Suzanne Alcott Corporate Relations Coordinator 781.292.2282 suzanne.alcott@olin.edu

FRANKLIN W. OLIN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Olin Way Needham, MA 02492-1200 781-292-2300 olin.edu meet.olin.edu Nondiscrimination Statement Olin College does not discriminate in admission, employment, or other college-administered programs on the basis of race, color, creed, national or ethnic origin, gender, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation, or veteran, marital or citizenship status.

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: Michael J. Maloney PHOTOGRAPHY: Alex Budnitz, Matthew Muspratt, Mark Ostow

MAC_OTCMS-A-3000_050115