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Rebecca Crocker

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The World of Human-Computer Interaction

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In my last post, I talked about the technical elective courses TEAM students can take as part of the program. In my case, I decided to take Data Mining and Human Computer Interaction during the first semester, and will be part of the HCI research team in the upcoming semester. Therefore, I will dedicate this post to talking about what HCI is and what kind of research takes place in this area.

Human-Computer Interaction is a relatively new field within computer science based on the study and design of interfaces between users and systems. These can range from websites and information layout to devices such as screens, wearable technologies, robot communication and even accessibility designs for disabled users. HCI not only requires classical computer science knowledge (programming, databases, networks) but also intersects with many softer areas such as psychology, sociology, cognitive sciences and media studies.

In the beginning, everything was about “making it work”. Users had to adapt to the computer and not the other way around. The programmer had already spent too much time working on complex software to add a bunch of “usability” requirements on top of that, just to make it look nicer (Don’t get me wrong, this is not me speaking! It’s just the answer you would have probably received from a programmer in the ‘90s if you had asked him to change his COBOL-software because users could not figure out how to use it).

Fortunately, things changed with time and though IT geeks remain quite sensitive to comments about their code and interfaces (myself included), new roles such as designers, UX (User Experience) designers, product managers and business analysts have gained more importance in the software development cycle. These people can basically put themselves in the shoes of a non-technical user and think how the system could be improved in order to be more intuitive and need almost no help, nor textual references to understand it. No wonder children can just sit in front of a tablet and slide their fingers like pros after only a few hours of practice. Things are easy now; common sense rules and interfaces imitate reality. HCI is the main factor responsible for this revolution and much of the comfort and ease we find in today’s interfaces would not exist if it hadn’t been for years of research devoted to this field. Pinching, dragging, and touching appear to be magical in comparison to old-school clicks, tabs and enters!

HCI research tries to go one step beyond and study how things will be in the coming years. For example, interfaces have been proven to help teach body language to children with autism – not to replace traditional human tutoring and attention, but as a way to complement it (and even supplement it in extreme cases such as inhabitants of poor countries or remote places).

During the upcoming months I will have the good fortune to work with Dr. Ehsan Hoque, a renowned expert in the field, in the study of interactions between humans and computer-based systems to improve communication skills. There is not much I can say as most of our research is still in progress, but I can leave one question open which I hope I will be able to answer by the end of this semester: can a person improve his public speaking by receiving live feedback from a computer?

 

– Agustin Baretto ’15 (MS)

Gus picture

March 2, 2015
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Come On, Let’s Ski

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Under a deep blue sky, gliding down a mountain through the fresh snow with the sun glistening on surrounding snow-covered peaks must be one of the most incredible feelings in the world. But how can we get it? Of course, skiing!

 

Last Sunday, two classmates and I enjoyed this fabulous feeling. As a beginner, to be honest, I was nervous rather than excited at first. However, I relaxed and began to enjoy myself after dozens of falls, and mastering the skills a little bit. Here are some tips for beginners I can share with all of you from my many falls:

  1. Choose equipment that perfectly fits you!

Proper equipment can be a great support during your skiing and help you ski more effectively, while improper equipment can make you uncomfortable and even be dangerous. Proper boots fit your foot comfortably but snugly. Proper skis fit your skiing ability and height. Proper poles fit your height.

  1. Dress up and stay warm.

Your outer clothes should be waterproof, especially your pants. Sunglasses and gloves are needed.

  1. Check the weather before you go.

Rain will be poor weather for skiing. Unfortunately, the day we went skiing was a rainy day, and a heavy rain! Rain makes the ground too slippery, makes you wet, and makes you feel cold as well. It will be harder for experienced skiers to keep control on a rainy day, let alone a greenhorn.

  1. Don’t be afraid of falls and learn to stand up by yourself.

It’s common to fall over when you are skiing. Don’t be afraid. The more you fall, the more quickly you learn. If you fall over, you should learn how to stand up by yourself, although there are many warm-hearted people willing to give you a hand. I still remember that day, every time I fell over, there was always someone willing to help me. And the one who asked me most whether I needed help or not was a girl, only 7 years old, also a beginner. I asked for help standing up at the beginning, until I saw that girl easily standing up by herself when she fell over, which shocked me deeply and pushed me to stand up by myself no matter what the situation. Generally, it’s very hard for a person to stand up when they fall over during skiing, due to the skis and boots making it hard to move as you wish. After I tried many, many times, I succeeded. Once you learn how to stand up on your own, you will never be afraid to fall over.

  1. Don’t choose the level over ability.

It is exciting and challenging to choose the highest level, but getting out of control and alignment at high speed can break one’s bones!

 

After learning how to stop, turn right, and turn left, keep these tips in mind, and just enjoy your experience!

 

 

– Jill Jin ’15 (MS)Jill Jin Pic

February 16, 2015
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Taking a Closer Look: Undergraduate and Graduate Courses

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If you have read my previous posts, you will know that I completed my undergraduate education here at the University of Rochester in biomedical engineering. I received my bachelor’s degree in May and began my pursuit for a master’s degree in September. It is difficult for me to compare the core TEAM classes with undergraduate courses because I did not take any business courses while I was an undergraduate; however, since I have continued with BME as my concentration for TEAM, I have had the opportunity to take a step back and accurately compare and contrast undergraduate-level BME classes with graduate-level classes. For the most part, I have found that the differences between the two levels of courses are typically dependent on the course itself and the decisions of the professor who teaches it.

In the fall, for my concentration, I completed two biomedical engineering courses that each ran for only half of the semester, and one biology course. In September and October I took Controlled Release Systems and in November and December I took Biomedical Nanotechnology. The first difference that I noticed in these graduate-level biomedical engineering courses was that they were much more specialized. These two classes focused heavily on a particular topic, which I really liked. It was great to feel that I was becoming an expert on these two topics because of the small class size and in-depth lectures. So in general, these two classes were pretty different from my undergraduate classes.

On the other hand, the biology course that I took last fall, Developmental Biology, was very similar to an undergraduate-level biology course. In fact, it was cross-listed as an undergraduate course so I was taking it alongside many senior biology majors. I sat in the same lectures as these students and took the same tests. I thought this was an effective learning environment for me because my peers had a lot of biology background. While I do have some biology background, I do not have as much as a biology major so I was able to learn not only from my professor, but also from my peers.

The two courses that remain to complete my concentration are Bioprocess Engineering and Biomedical Ultrasound. These two courses are, in a sense, a combination of the two types of classes previously described. These two courses, similar to Developmental Biology, are cross-listed as undergraduate courses; however, the coursework for graduate students is a little bit different. In Bioprocess Engineering, I will complete an extra project at the end of the semester. In Biomedical Ultrasound, I will complete a project individually whereas undergraduates complete it in groups. Also, in this class, graduate students often have an extra question or two on our homework and tests.

So in short, as you can tell, the differences and similarities are course dependent. I would not say that graduate courses are significantly more difficult than undergraduate courses; however, they do provide more in-depth conversation, learning, and critical thinking – something I truly value about graduate school.

 

 

– Courtney Astemborski ’15 (MS)

Courtney

February 11, 2015
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Winter at the University of Rochester

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When I was applying for graduate school, I was considering three universities. Two of them were in warm states (California and Florida), and the other one was the University of Rochester in upstate New York. Considering that I come from Algeria, which is a warm country situated in North Africa, I obviously feared the cold weather in Rochester. This fear was pushing me to cut my list down to the two warmer cities. However, after weighing the pros and cons of living and studying in a cold city, I decided to pick Rochester, which is a great University that is known to have a very harsh winter.

Even though Rochester is one of the top 3 snowiest cities in the United States (according to Accuweather), I looked at the bright side of it. Living in a cold climate would oblige you to stay indoors more often than if you were in a warm city like Los Angeles. The benefit I sought in this is the fact that being indoors encourages you to dedicate more time to studying. I personally wouldn’t have spent a lot of time at the library if I had plenty of outdoor activities available in winter.

Besides, the University of Rochester is aware of the limitations weather puts on students’ mobility. In order to tackle this problem, the U of R offers a bunch of accommodations that ease the lives of students. As a matter of fact, shuttles are available to transport students from on-campus and off-campus housing locations to the University. These shuttles are a convenient, safe and free means of transportation for students who want to get around and stay warm. Moreover, shuttles are provided twice a week to shopping locations like the mall, the international food market, Walmart, Wegmans, and others.

In addition to that, the University has an underground tunnel network that connects different buildings on campus. These tunnels allow students to go from one side of the campus to the other without being exposed to bad weather.

On the other side, some students take advantage of the cold weather and snow, and enjoy practicing winter sports. In fact, a couple of ski resorts are within driving distance from the University, which could be a great getaway for the weekend after a stressful week at school. Also, organizations at the University like the International Students Organization (ISO) and the Simon Outdoor Adventure Club organize ski trips on an annual basis.

For all of these reasons, the University of Rochester helped my fear of cold weather go away. Actually, the available accommodations for students made me become indifferent to the weather. I learned how a negative situation could be turned into a positive one if you put in enough effort and resources, which is exactly what the University of Rochester does. I also learned to look at the big picture and take advantage of the snowy weather to turn it into good grades and a lot of fun.

 

– Amir Ianis KHELIL ’15 (MS)

Amir Khelil

 

January 30, 2015
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data screens

Diving into Data Mining

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As part of the TEAM program, students are encouraged to take up to three technical elective courses. This is a perfect complement to the core entrepreneurship management courses as it allows us to get in touch with the latest technologies available and focus on those specific areas that might be needed to develop our future startups. In my case, coming from a computer science background and being deeply interested in the creation of web and mobile apps, I decided to take the courses Data Mining and Human Computer Interaction during the fall semester. I can say today that I could not have made a better decision. I learned a lot from both courses and more importantly, I was able to put my knowledge into practice by working on small projects requiring my data science and computer science skills. On top of that, after finishing the semester, I was asked by both professors to do research for each of the courses, so that means I will be able to further dive into the stuff I love and will have plenty of time to do it!

In this post, I am going to talk about Data Mining and will leave Human Computer Interaction for my next article. Data Mining is the extraction of interesting patterns within large sets of data by using several different techniques related to artificial intelligence, statistics, machine learning, and database systems. These patterns are then translated into useful information that can be easily understood by end users or clients. So for example, a supermarket might use data mining in order to analyze its customers’ purchases and make smart decisions based on the results of the research. These might help to understand the different kinds of customers who shop at the supermarket, what they seek, how much they spend on average, and which products they usually buy. It might also help to find correlations between products (e.g., if most of the customers who buy gin also buy tonic and lemons), or even to predict whether putting a new product on a specific shelf would be a good decision, or if it should be put somewhere else. There is a story that years ago, Walmart found that many young American males bought diapers and beer together, a correlation that is unexpected and not obvious at first glance. You would expect customers buying diapers to also buy baby food, for example, but not beer. After doing some analysis, researchers reached the conclusion that these were young new fathers who were asked by their wives to go out to buy some diapers and, once they were at the shop, took the chance to also get some beer!

There is plenty of bibliographical material you can read about this fascinating discipline so I will stop talking about Data Mining and tell you about the project I worked on during the end of the course. Christmas was coming and I wanted to give a book as a gift to a friend and so I faced the problem: what books would this friend like? Gustame is an app I developed to address this problem. By signing in to the site using their Facebook accounts, users are able to see a list of their friends and for each of those friends, get recommendations based on the Facebook pages related to books they already like. Sounds tricky, huh? Then I should not mention that it uses an open knowledge database (Freebase) to disambiguate redundant entities and that it uses a Slope One algorithm based on your closed graph of contacts to make the recommendation… but I will give you an example so you can figure out how it works.

  • Your friend Albert has liked the Facebook pages “The Hobbit – the book” and “Alice in Wonderland,” so we might assume he has read those two books.
  • Your other friends Bob and Claire also liked those two pages, as well as “The Chronicles of Narnia Books”, which Albert hasn’t. This means they have similar tastes to Albert and that they have read a book Albert might enjoy reading too.
  • You get a recommendation to give Albert the books “The Chronicles of Narnia” as a gift.

However, I invite you to just go and try the app yourself by visiting www.gustame.com! Any suggestions are welcome!

 

– Agustin Baretto ’15 (MS)

Agustin_pic

 

January 23, 2015
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Courtney and friends

Winter Break: Family Traditions and Quality Time with Friends

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For me, winter break has always been a great time spent with family and friends. This occurs naturally because of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays that occur over this break. These holidays are some of my favorite because they are a time of happiness, joy, and peace.

Christmas is filled with many traditions in my family. On Christmas Eve, my family attends mass at our parish, St. Pius X Church. At this mass, there is a reenactment of the nativity for children. I always enjoy seeing this play because when I was in middle school and high school I played many different roles and it is a great pastime for me. I love to see that it is still a part of the tradition of the Church.

After mass, my family goes to my paternal grandmother’s house to have dinner and exchange gifts with my father’s side of the family. Our dinner includes some traditional Polish food like pierogies and pickled herring. Prior to dinner, we participate in the Polish tradition of the breaking of the oplatek (Christmas wafer). Each family member is given a piece of the oplatek and goes around the table wishing everyone good health, joy, and happiness for the upcoming year while sharing a piece of the wafer. It is tradition that this breaking of the oplatek begins with my grandmother and follows in a sequential order based on age. This is a great way for my family to reconnect with everyone and spend some time together.mom cooking

On Christmas Day, we spend the whole day at my house and my mother’s family comes for dinner. The day begins with a gift exchange between my immediate family and presents from Santa Claus. It has become a new tradition that my sister and I assist our mother with making hors d’oeuvres for the day, as well as baking desserts for after dinner. Each year, my mother makes lasagna in order to touch on our Italian roots. She is quite famous for her lasagna and each year I think it gets better and better. It is wonderful to see my family on Christmas Day as my cousins are beginning to grow their families with marriages and children and this is a great time to see all the growth that has happened in the past year.

New Year’s has always been a fun holiday for me because it is a time to celebrate the approaching year as well as to reflect on the previous year. In 2014, I had the privilege to graduate from college, enter graduate school, and begin my adult life. To celebrate this New Year’s Eve, I traveled to Boston, MA with some of my best friends from high school. This was great because we haven’t been able to spend this much time with one another since before entering college and it allowed for a truly memorable experience. Whether it was walking the streets of the North End, grabbing lunch in Quincy Market, or stopping at the outlets for some shopping, it was a wonderful start to the year.

These holidays were the highlights of my break and I now feel rested and excited to return to Rochester for another semester in the TEAM program!

 

– Courtney Astemborski ’15 (MS)

Courtney

 

January 16, 2015
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Holiday Lights

My Favorite Class

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At the end of the fall quarter, we finally made it to our final exams. It was time to review what we already knew, think about what we had learned and combine knowledge across disciplines, honing our skills in comprehensive thinking, as an entrepreneur should do.

For this blog I want to share more about TEM 401: Economics, Marketing and Strategy, my favorite class. Economics is a science to satisfy both human needs and wants in an efficient way under “Pareto Efficiency”, providing us with a foundation for understanding the mechanism of the economic marketplace and how a company should react to survive among the fierce competition. Studying both consumer and firm behaviors and learning how they interact with each other helped us thoroughly analyze the problem and determine the demand and supply conditions in the market by solving the equilibrium analysis. Further, we predicted the outcomes of interactions among participants with interdependent payoffs by using Game Theory to model the behavior of each individual.

If you have a company, how can your company survive price competition without killing all the profit? What are your strategy and tactics? How do you identify the determinants of market structure? Output levels? Price? What are customers’ concerns and what do they benefit from? How do you promote and place your company? After building on the economic models, we explored these market issues with the 3C-STP-4P models through real case studies and business write-ups, going far beyond the textbooks.

Our final project was a case analysis. During the project, we learned that operating a company successfully is overwhelmingly difficult. We needed to know the exact needs of the customer and how we could benefit them directly through our products and services with our own sources and strength. How we position and differentiate ourselves compared to the competitors were also crucial issues. After figuring these out, we needed to deal with thorny follow-up questions on the company’s strategy and tactics. Which are exactly the right strategy and tactics? Who knows!

If TEM 440 Screening Technical Opportunities just tells you how to start a company, TEM 401 teaches you how to run a start-up company profitably in the long run. Maintaining is harder than starting.

Entrepreneurship is like a mountain that’s too big to climb, but that’s also why it is so rewarding.

 

– Jill Jin ’15 (MS)Jill Jin Pic

January 9, 2015
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Apple and Pumpkin Pie

Things to Do in Life

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Plant a tree, have a child, write a book, and win a pie-eating contest. That is the list of things that, in my humble opinion, every man should do in order to ensure a measure of immortality. Luckily I can say I have already done the last one. Coincidentally, I accomplished it during Thanksgiving week. Here’s the story:

 

To be honest, I had never celebrated Thanksgiving before in my life, so I was new to the whole cranberry and turkey dinner thing. I didn’t know much about what was being celebrated so in my eyes, it all looked like a second fall break (only this time, there were Black Friday offers in the middle). Shops and advertisers had long ago started shooting their fall artillery by decorating every single corner of the city with pumpkins and autumn leaves, and e-commerce websites were counting the days before the big sales started. I did not have anything against it, but I felt that Thanksgiving had to be something more than just people queuing outside stores, waiting to get inside to get the best deals like I had seen on TV in previous years. And I was right.

 

Not long before the holiday, I received an email from Simon Business School inviting students to get together to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner. There was going to be turkey and stuffing, and even vegetarian turkey for those who don’t eat meat. Everyone was invited to have a good time, and that was the only important thing. I decided to go and leave my prejudices behind. Maybe it was not just a commercial thing like I thought, and if these people were inviting me just because, then there had to be a reason to celebrate.

 

When I got there, I couldn’t have been happier with my decision. Everyone at the party was friendly and amicable. People were introducing each other and talking about their projects and dreams, their pasts and futures. Organizers were joyfully serving typical Thanksgiving dishes and explaining how they were prepared, what ingredients were in them, and even telling stories about how they used to celebrate when they were children. It did not seem like a marketing campaign or a fashionable trend. These people’s eyes were shining as they remembered the way their mothers used to prepare the same foods for them or how their fathers took them to see a football game at this time of year. Thanksgiving seemed to be deeply rooted in these people’s lives, a cultural, historical and, for some, even religious occasion to give thanks for what they had by serving others – something we should all imitate and do, whatever our creed is, wherever we come from.

 

It was while I was under this state of Thanksgiving excitement, and inspired by this excessive amount of contagious happiness, that I decided to sign myself up for a pie-eating contest. When in Rome… do as the Americans do… and so I did. I was going to do my best, I was going to be part of the celebration too, and just as others had cooked or laid the table, my role now was to eat that pie and show my gratitude to this University that had opened its arms to me.

 

Ready… Set… Go! I smashed my face into the pie and started taking the biggest bites I could, while my cheeks and forehead were totally covered in pumpkin and cream! Time was running out and I had to devour this pie and… well, then someone told me I could use a spoon, like the rest of the participants. I had thought it was the kind of contest where people can’t use their hands (like the ones you see on TV) but it did not matter. I was a little surprised and embarrassed but I continued until my plate was empty. The end of the story is: I won the contest! But even better, I got the best of all prizes: an evening surrounded by nice people that I will always remember with a smile on my face.

 

– Agustin Baretto ’15 (MS)

Agustin_pic

 

December 22, 2014
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HemoBox Team

Screening Technologies

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As part of the Technical Entrepreneurship and Management program, we complete a course entitled TEM 440: Screening Technologies, taught by Mark Wilson. It focuses on the assessment of whether or not technologies have desirable commercial attributes and should be taken to market. First, we look at all of the technologies that are patented (provisional, pending, or issued) and held through UR Ventures, the University’s office of technology transfer. We then narrow over 400 technologies down to two ideas that we wish to “thicken” and determine whether or not they are worthy of continuing with business and product development.

 

As part of this course, we are required to attend High Tech Rochester’s Pre-Seed Workshop. This workshop is a two and a half day event that is similarly structured to the TEM 440 course, but moves at a much faster pace. Participants work in teams to heavily research and develop the business potential of a technological idea, which is provided by an idea champion. This year, 13 teams participated in the event. Each team consists of the idea champion, subject matter experts, coaches, contributing observers, and university students. There were also some patent attorneys at the workshop to help with legal advice. The TEAM students participate by conducting market research and are there to learn firsthand what it is like to begin a start-up.

 

I was lucky to have a Pre-Seed Workshop experience that was unique from the other TEAM students’ experience. Before the workshop, when High Tech Rochester was accepting applications for idea champions, Professor Wilson encouraged us to apply. I was eager to hear about this opportunity as I have been working on a project that I felt could go through this process.

 

Hemo-Box is a product that my senior design team and I developed last year during the University of Rochester’s Biomedical Engineering Senior Design program. The Hemo-Box is a blood transport cooler for hospitals and blood banks that need to safely transport, store, and monitor the temperature of blood. Each year over $10 million of blood products are wasted due to insufficient temperature regulation. This waste puts further strain on an already depleted supply of donor blood. Many hospitals have found picnic coolers to be the most effective tool for keeping blood units cold while patients await transfusions; however, these can be unreliable and unsafe for the blood. Hemo-Box provides more reliable cooling and the ability to monitor and log the temperature to alert hospital staff when corrective action is needed.

 

Going through the workshop as an idea champion was a lot of work and was tiring; however, it was definitely a worthwhile experience. I would have to say that the best part of this experience was receiving feedback from professionals in the manufacturing and marketing worlds. Since this device started as a senior design project, most of my resources have been from the University and as a result, I was lacking the knowledge of how this device could realistically hold up in the market and how it could effectively be manufactured. I feel that coming out of the workshop, I have learned that while there are still some flaws with the business development of this device, it is definitely worth taking it to the next step.

 

 

– Courtney Astemborski ’15 (MS)

Courtney

December 15, 2014
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NYC skyline

Being a Part of the NYC Swing

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Weekend trips are a great way to travel and visit new places you might have always wanted to see, while at the same time staying relatively close to home and campus so as to quickly get back to studying without the hassle of flight connections, passports, jet lag and excess baggage fees. Just grab a backpack and fill it with as many clothes as you can, and that is all you need to start rollin’ down the road. Fall is the perfect time to take a break, especially after finishing midterms, so why not take a bus and head to the big city? That’s what I decided to do last weekend. Here are some of the tips I can share with you from my experience as a tourist in New York City:

 

 

 

  • Getting there: Priceline.com offers really good deals if you are not in a hurry (you can even bid for flight tickets by “naming your price” with the condition that you cannot pick a specific time to fly but only the date you expect to do it). I really wanted to make the most out of my time though, so I decided to travel by bus overnight: I just boarded, sat in my seat, closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I was waking up in the city that never sleeps!
  • Accommodations: Even though New York has a lot of hotels and hostels to accommodate the thousands of tourists that usually visit the city, it can sometimes be tricky to find a place to spend your weekend, and even trickier if, like me, you did not plan your trip with much time in advance. Luckily, there are people willing to rent their furnished apartments in great locations for only a few days at incredible prices. Sites like Airbnb.com allow you to get in touch with them and assure a safe experience to both owners and visitors.NYC Skyline
  • Shopping: New York City has a wide variety of shops to offer, from large renowned stores to small independent vintage-style shops. I was traveling with my girlfriend, so I can assure you – I have visited most of them (if not all).
  • Instagram it! If there is a place to take cool pictures with vintage effects, it is New York City. The views from Top of the Rock and the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and the bridges are some of the photos you MUST take and share with your friends and relatives, so prepare your camera and create an account for any social network you like.
  • Art, art, art: I spent three days in the city, and one of them was dedicated solely to art. It all started at the Museum of Modern Art (they offer free visits on the first Friday of the month), with a lucky and unexpected viewing of the Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit (in place until March 2015). Then I continued to the Guggenheim (with a building that is a work of art itself), and concluded with a visit to the New York Comic Con (the greatest comic and entertainment expo in the world). Whatever type of art you are most excited about, New York will have a gallery or museum to engage you.
  • Eat and drink: There are plenty of bars and restaurants to visit in New York, and most of them can be found in any travel guide, but there is a place I discovered that you will probably not read about unless someone tells you about it. It is a bar called 230 FIFTH (named for its location at 230 Fifth Avenue) and it is located on the rooftop of a building with a perfect view of the city. Either for a brunch at noon or an evening drink, this place will make you feel you are actually on top of the world. There are no signs outside so just walk into the building, head to the elevator and press the rooftop button!Oct blog_Agustin NYC 3
  • Getting around: Fall is a wonderful time to visit New York, whether you enjoy strolling through colorful parks or heading inside to warm up to some vibrant entertainment. But whatever you choose, you will definitely need to be prepared to walk. Even though the city has an affordable and convenient transportation service (with extensive subway and bus systems), it will sometimes be quicker for you to just travel around using your feet, and it will also allow you to get to know the city better. Another option for those who are more adventurous is to hop onto a bike and cruise along the many bike routes the city has.

 

All in all, I enjoyed traveling to this marvelous and exciting city. Although I was really tired after the weekend and really wanted to get back to good old Rochester, I must say I had a great time there and had the chance to discover very nice places and people (New Yorkers are one-of-a-kind, friendly, open-minded and humorous). The beauty of the buildings and parks appealed to me. I was touched by my visit to the 9/11 Memorial Museum and could not avoid thinking how much more beautiful it would have looked if the towers were still there. New York is definitely a place to visit and luckily, it is very close to Rochester!

 

– Agustin Baretto ’15 (MS)

Agustin_pic

 

November 24, 2014
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Let the Job Search Begin

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Just a few weeks ago, I gave my father a call to tell him something that I was super excited about. As he answered the phone, I blurted out “Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Today is the day that I officially began my job search.” You may now be wondering what it was that exactly marked this beginning. Well, for me, it was attending the first Career Lunch of the year for TEAM students. At this lunch, I was inspired and became eager to begin searching for a job.

 

I would like to step back a little now and tell you why I was so excited about this. When making my decision on which graduate program to attend, my number one requirement was career placement. I wanted to be enrolled in a program that I felt would launch my career as a biomedical engineer with an interest in management and business. As I researched the TEAM program and saw that the overall placement rate for graduates was 90% within six months, I knew this was the program for me.

 

Career Lunches are held once a month for TEAM students. At the first one, we were exposed to the many services that we are offered while here. To me, the most helpful thing to learn about was the fact that we are provided with the resources of both the University’s Gwen M. Greene Career & Internship Center and the Simon Business School’s Career Management Center. That is like getting the best of both worlds! Since I did my undergraduate degree here I was familiar with the tools from the Gwen Greene Center such as CareerLink and CareerShift and it was great to know that I still had access to these two helpful programs. A highlight of this Career Lunch was exploring SimonWorks. This program is similar to CareerLink; however, it has more of a focus on business and management since it is operated through Simon. I know that I will be using these programs extensively in my career search in the upcoming months.

 

A few days later, I scheduled a meeting with Kathy Driscoll. Kathy is TEAM’s assistant director for career management and is a part of the Career Management Center at the Simon Business School. She provides students with guidance and assistance in the job search. Our first item to tackle was my résumé. We sat down together and she provided me with feedback to make my résumé just right. From there, we discussed ways to narrow down my search. For me, we decided to narrow by location, as I am very interested in heading to Boston next. Kathy then suggested that I make a list of companies that I have an interest in. I really like this advice because looking for a job can be incredibly daunting and overwhelming. I feel that looking for a full-time job is practically a full-time job in and of itself. Kathy also provided me with some great tips to speak to alumni in my field.

 

While this is just the beginning, I am extremely excited to continue on this journey. Although it seems like it could take a long time, I am determined and confident that the support that I receive from the TEAM program will get me there.

 

– Courtney Astemborski ’15 (MS)

Courtney

 

November 10, 2014
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Accounting in Autumn

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Autumn has arrived, and we finally managed to finish the first part of our accounting and financing class. The class is aimed at helping students understand and productively use the principles of finance and accounting in order to better structure business decisions. Professor Heidi Tribunella taught us “The accounting model presents skills required to interpret and analyze common financial statements and evaluate a company’s past performance as well as potential future performance.”

 

We learned what financial statements are after we learned basic accounting concepts. Subsequently, we dove deeper to see what further information can be gained from analysis. Furthermore, we learned how to do a transaction analysis, in case there are any within the company, plus how it can influence our financial statements step-by-step. Beyond that, we learned what our real liabilities are, regarding our assets or equity, and how to manage them in a proper way to show a good picture of a company. How can we manage and estimate our costs and do cost-profit analysis? It’s really incredible that we were introduced into the accounting world in such a short period time, transforming us from students who knew nothing about accounting into individuals who now understand the basic concepts.

 

Now hopefully my classmates will receive good grades!

 

Once I finished my accounting exam, I suddenly found that all the green leaves turned red and yellow, in what seemed to be overnight. You can’t even imagine the fall scene that is mixed with green, yellow, and red; it sends off a very powerful visual impact. I can’t help but express how fabulous it is.

 

While I was walking across the lawn, in front of Rush Rhees Library, I watched students sitting on the grass, reading, writing, talking, and so on, sunlight seeping through the leaves. Deep down, everyone is cherishing the last bit of sunshine before the heavy snow arrives in Rochester. I feel as though I can never love the fall in Rochester too much. I love its colorfulness and enjoy its peacefulness… especially now that midterms have passed.

 

 

– Jill Jin ’15 (MS)Jill Jin Pic

November 3, 2014
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Just Like in the Movies

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Just like in movies…

 

I think that is the best way to summarize my experience so far, since the very first moment I stepped foot onto the University of Rochester campus.

 

Things I had seen all through my childhood on television suddenly became real experiences I was able to witness and feel with my own senses. Images I thought were just the product of the film-making industry happened to actually be true and tangible. A “just like in the movies” University!

Student playing frisbee

 

There’s the majestic English-style buildings with lots of students coming in and out, the state of the art labs with guys carefully holding test tubes, the eat-as-much-as-you-want cafeteria with students holding trays with burgers, salad, and milk (you definitely would not mix that food and beverage where I come from…), the American football team with more players on the sidelines than playing (sorry, I just can’t understand this game… believe me I tried!), the guy watching them eating an enormous hotdog and drinking from a massive jumbo Pepsi. There were the first-day-of-classes, events with games, bands playing, free T-shirts, and the fraternity parties (not that I have gone to any yet… I just heard about them). There’s the vast, monumental quad with the greenest grass you could ever see (believe me, it’s so green you need sunglasses to walk through it), and the group of guys playing frisbee – don’t ask me why, but you will always find them, a group of happy people laughing and graciously jumping trying to catch the frisbee in the air (when do they study, I ask myself whenever I see them), while I focus on making it from one class to the other, worrying about the assignments that still need work.

 

 

I could even say my life outside of campus has become a little bit like the lives of movie characters: I wake up in the morning, have some just-like-in-movies (JLIM) breakfast (coffee, orange juice, pancakes, eggs & bacon) walk down a street full of JLIM typical American houses with a JLIM large front yard, a JLIM porch with some chairs, a JLIM 2-cars-wide garage, and (of course) a JLIM mailbox with the family name on it on the street. I could probably go on naming JLIM things, but I think you get the point… many things are just the way I used to picture them before coming here. But there are also many things I deal with everyday that do not appear on the movies: there are lots of assignments, hard work to do, exams to study for. There are great professors and advisors willing to help you and give you their advice at any time, even after class. There are lots of resources for students such as printers, private offices to study in and nice, smiling librarians at our disposal to help us find whatever piece of information we need. There are the offices for international students and for career services, both of which organize meetings to make us feel at home. There are also talks and dissertation paper defenses and job fairs. There are even complex math discussions with random people at a bus stop (maybe that would fall into the just-like-in-Big-Bang-Theory things…)

 

To sum up, some things are just like in the movies, others not. Some days I love it here, other days I miss where I’m from. Some things are very cool, some are not. Some things are really fun, some not so much. Some things are really easy, some things definitely aren’t. Some days go really quickly, some move rather slowly. Now that I think about it… things are just like back home.

 

– Agustin Baretto ’15 (MS)

Agustin_pic

 

October 28, 2014
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