Stevens Institute of Technology: Admissions Blog

Trapani is a winner at the 2008 ISPE New Jersey chapter student poster competition

Michael Trapani, a recent graduate of Stevens Institute of Technology, was one of the winners at the 2008 International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineering's (ISPE) New Jersey chapter student poster competition. He was selected for his poster, "Back Up: Expandable Intervertebral Cage with Rotational Insert." Trapani was a Biomedical Engineering major and a member of Stevens' class of 2008.

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"Elegance is Prized": Mark Sullivan, '98

By Regina Pynn, '11
Student Correspondent

Mark Sullivan, ‘02
Software Engineer, YouTube

“As I've gotten older, I've become a believer in the theory that it takes 10 years to do anything well.” 

This is the personal philosophy of Mark Sullivan, '98.  Mark, originally from New Milford, NJ, entered Stevens in 1993 to complete a degree in Computer Science.  His life’s journey has taken him to YouTube, a part of Google, a dream job for many in the computer science field. 

In his day-to-day activities, Mark encounters problems that test his creativity, programming skills, and problem solving ability.  One problem Mark is currently working on is how best to filter out inappropriate videos from YouTube.

“YouTube's users upload far too many videos for anyone to manually review, so our users help us by ‘flagging’ inappropriate videos.  But even that can create a backlog of work, so how can we decide a video's priority for our reviewers?  Based on its total number of flags?  Or how fast it's being flagged?  Can we recognize written or spoken words from the video…And then how do we combine these different signals to get a single priority?  And how do we make this run quickly enough?  How can we adjust things when we get more reliable signals or when our users' behavior changes?”

There are interesting questions here, only some of which have well-known answers, and those can be difficult to scale…my days consist of some simple programming tasks, some design and discussion, some data analysis, the occasional interview, talks and seminars, and teaching my coworkers to unicycle.”

Stevens not only taught Mark world-class technical skills, but allowed him to work in groups outside of the classroom.  As an undergraduate Mark participated in many extracurricular activities including Jazz Band, Dramatic Society, the Yacht Club, and several campus media groups including SIT-TV, WCPR, and The Stute.

Mark participated in the co-op program during his time at Stevens and he feels it put him well ahead of that 10 year curve by letting him “start doing well ahead of schedule.  The series of short but full-time jobs gave me a chance to sample life across a wide variety of companies, make contacts, and motivate me for my academic studies.”

One part of the academic environment of Stevens that Mark appreciated were the frequent seminars hosted by the computer science department.

“The one-hour seminars each featured a professor's new research, a doctoral thesis, a potential hire's project results, or a visiting celebrity with something interesting to say.  I could always understand the introduction, would usually be lost by the end, but I always learned about a field new to me.  It was great exercise in approaching unknown problems, and it's been invaluable -- not only to be exposed to so many techniques of dealing with particular problems -- but to appreciate the variety of approaches.”  He advises all students to attend seminars held by their department, “even if you can only understand the first half hour.”

To students considering a career in computer science Mark advises, “let yourself be fascinated…I’m still amazed at the tall stack of technologies necessary to make a computer work…I am a software engineer; software design is best viewed as an art.  In both engineering and the arts, elegance is prized.”

Stevens and the U.S. Patent Office: Yesterday and Today

Stevens Institute of Technology has a long tradition of enterprise and innovation that started with the Stevens founding family. One example is Colonel John Stevens III, who started the first U.S. patent office. During his life, the steam engine was created. However, it could not sustain a long journey. So Colonel John developed an improved engine that could, and to protect it he started the U.S. patent office.

Today, recent graduate Rita Patel, '05, is carrying on the Stevens tradition at the U.S. Patent Office, where she is a Patent Examiner. It's her job to review patent applications that come in and search databases to see if a patent or similar patent applications exist for a proposed invention. She helps to determine an application's "patentability."

The coolest invention she's reviewed yet? The iPhone. We wonder what Colonel Stevens would have thought of that gadget.

Read Rita Patel's Profile >>

2007 Senior Design Project in Pharmaceutical Engineering

The 2007 Senior Design team of Jorge DaSilva, Jay Peterson, Murat Kocak, and William Indoe (along with Professor Richard Berkof) have written an article in Pharmaceutical Engineering about their innovative Automatic Pill Bottle Opener.

Download the article (PDF, 215KB).

 

Video: Stevens Career Services Among Top 20

Stevens’ Office of Career Development among Top 20 in US

HOBOKEN , N.J. — According to a survey by The Princeton Review that asked 120,000 students at 366 top colleges to rate their schools , Stevens Institute of Technology’s Office of Career Development (OCD) ranks 16 th among university career services and job placement bureaus across the United States.

Stevens’ OCD was also the only university career development office in the New York-Metropolitan region to register in the Top 20 in the category “Best Career/Job Placement Services.”

“What is so significant to us about our appearance on this list,” said Stevens’ Director of Career Development Lynn Insley, “is that this ranking represents a vote of confidence in the range of services we provide for our students from the day they set foot on campus.”

Insley oversees a staff of four career counselors who work with students beginning in their freshmen year. The director is proud to note that upon graduation, 85 percent of students in the Class of 2007 had found employment with top-notch firms or had been accepted to competitive graduate or professional school programs.

“Our track record is based not just on the number of placements, but on the quality of the employment opportunities our students obtain when they leave Stevens,” said Insley. “We believe that our students receive outstanding job offers with salaries above the national average because of the Institute’s stress on experiential learning: cooperative education and high-quality internships give real-world experience to our students throughout their college years.              

“As a result,” she said, “when you graduate from Stevens, you are equipped with a great-looking resume demonstrating proven industry experience. Recruiters from the financial, engineering, telecom and pharmaceutical industries are very impressed by what they see when a Stevens senior or recent graduate sits down with them for an interview.”

About the survey

The Princeton Review survey asks students 80 questions about their school's academics / administration, campus life, student body, and themselves. Tallies for this edition's rankings are based on surveys of 120,000 students (about 325 per campus) at the 366 schools in the book (not at all schools in the nation) during the 2006-07 and / or previous two school years. Ninety percent were completed online at http://survey.review.com. Ten percent were paper surveys conducted on campuses. The schools in the book are not ranked academically nor are they ranked 1 to 366 in any category.

About the book

Best 366 Colleges is one of 200 Princeton Review books published by Random House. Eight schools were added to the book this year. In addition to its two-page profiles on the schools and ranking lists, the book has a new section with lists of “Great Colleges for 15 of the Most Popular College Majors.” The book was first published in 1992. No school has ever paid a fee to be in it.

The Princeton Review is a New York City-based company known for its test-prep courses, education services, and books. It is not affiliated with Princeton University and not a magazine.

Video: Commencement 2007

Congratulations to the Class of 2007!

 

David Farber, '56, Grandfather of the Internet: Interview and Podcast

David Farber, '56, has been nicknamed "The Grandfather of the Internet" based on his innovations in computer science while at Bell Laboratories and other top research companies. Read more or download a podcast.

A summary of Dr. Farber's innovations from Ronald Lewis' Web site:

Dr. Farber graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1956 and began an 11-year career at Bell Laboratories, where he helped design the first electronic switching system (ESS-1) and the programming language SNOBOL. He subsequently held industry positions at the Rand Corporation and Scientific Data Systems, followed by academic positions at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Delaware.

At Irvine his research work was focused on creating the world's first operational Distributed Computer System. While a member of the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Delaware, he helped conceive and organize the major American research networks CSNET, NSFNet, and the National Research and Education Network (NREN).

Stevens Grad Founds Fashion Web site

Kevin McCormick, '05, is the founder of mydrobe.com, which he describes as "a new and easy way to organize your wardrobe, share your style with others, and find new fashions." The site allows users to post their wardrobes and get fashion advice from the mydrobe community on what to wear. McCormick also started dresskevin.com, which has been featured in People and on CNN, Good Morning America, and the CBS Early Show.