Olin Alumni Engineers of the Future
OUTCOMES 2017
what employers are saying...
top employers Google Microsoft athenahealth Apple Blue Origin Ivani U.S. Navy Pivotal Amazon Rockwell Automation Auris Surgical Robotics Boeing Facebook IBM Locus Robotics Raytheon Synapse Product Development
“Olin students are thoughtful, engaging, confident and collaborative, and I feel extraordinarily privileged to have the opportunity to work with them. Not only are the students truly passionate about learning, but they also care deeply about innovating and creating the best possible experiences for their classmates. I’ve been particularly impressed by the student-taught software classes that upperclassmen are designing and implementing themselves. I love to see this level of initiative, and I think this is why many Olin students have gone on to very successful careers at Google.”
Colleen Reding University Programs, Google
93% are employed or in graduate school
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$75,571 average salary of classes 2014-16
* Data is from classes 2014-16 six-months after graduation
TRANSFORMING PASSION INTO PURPOSE
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“Olin taught me not only to be an engineer, but to communicate well, look at projects holistically and understand overall dependencies and impacts.” Anne Itsuno ’08 Engineering Program Manager, Apple
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Following graduation from Olin, Anne went on to earn her MSE and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, where she served as outreach director for the Society of Women Engineers Graduate Committee and was the industry chair for NIMSA, a technology-focused student group. During her tenure at the University of Michigan, Anne was awarded
an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her extensive work on infrared photodector devices. After completing her PhD, Anne went to work for Raytheon as a senior engineer, where she served as a project manager and engineering technical lead and earned two achievement awards. In August 2014 she joined Apple, where she is currently an engineering program manager.
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Ellen Chisa ’10 Vice President of Product, Lola Ellen doesn’t sit still for long. When she’s not furthering her studies at the University of Washington or Harvard Business School, she’s starting businesses and teaching classes at Olin or General Assembly. During her time at Olin, she co-founded Alight Learning. From there Ellen went on to serve as a program manager for Microsoft for nearly three years, where outside of work she served as dean of the Awesome Foundation in Seattle, organizing over 30 individuals to give monthly grants to awesome ideas.
In 2012 she joined Kickstarter as a product manager, and in 2015 she returned to Boston to attend Harvard Business School. Ellen now serves as VP of product at Lola, a company that provides instant access to hotels, flights and anything else travel-related. Somewhere in all that she finds time to travel, write and teach. This fall she taught Human Factors and Interface Design at Olin.
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Dylan Garrett ’06 Account Director, Synapse Product Development Dylan took a leap of faith and joined Olin’s inaugural class. Following his four years at Olin, he served as a mechanical engineer at Synapse where he designed the custom mechanical portions of multiple consumer and biotech products. In 2008 he earned a certificate in human anatomy from the University of Washington
and moved into a program manager role at Synapse. By 2010 Dylan was serving as the business development manager, and in 2012 he moved into the account director role, where he is responsible for all strategic account management and business development in the Bay Area. Dylan holds one patent.
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Kate Garrett ’06 Co-founder & CEO, Ciel Medical A risk-taker and trailblazer, Kate was a member of Olin’s first class. Following graduation, she joined Pathway Medical as an R&D engineer and moved into a project manager role a few years later. In 2011 she attended Stanford University, where she studied medtech innovation as a Biodesign Innovation Fellow.
In March of 2012 she joined Acclarent Inc. as a strategic marketing consultant, a role she held for just over a year before going on to co-found Ciel Medical, a medical device company solving unmet clinical needs in the ICU. Kate is an inventor on fifteen US and international patents.
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“I think the Olin ideal of engineering with context — understanding the business and designing for the user — rather than just building something to spec, is an important foundation for a new product.” Nate Smith ’07 Co-founder & CTO, Lever Inc.
Nate was a member of Olin’s second graduating class and joined Google as a product manager following graduation. During his tenure at Google he worked with Google AdWords, redesigned the Google Images UI and served as a designer for Google Search. In 2012 Nate joined forces with fellow co-founders Sarah Nahm and Randal Truong to start Lever, a job application
tracking app used to vet and source new hires. Today, Nate’s colleagues include Olin alumni Rachael Stedman ’10 and Eric Hwang ’11. Lever’s success is looking very promising, Forbes magazine recently put the company’s worth at $80-$100 million.
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top summer intern employers Apple athenahealth Barrett Technology Bose GE Google IBM Ivani Microsoft OnShape Pivotal Raytheon Tesla
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top summer research labs Caltech Harvard University Johns Hopkins University MIT Olin
what employers are saying... “We hired two Olin interns in 2016. I had to encourage our lab director to consider undergrads, and after he interviewed two from Olin, he said they were both so impressive he couldn’t decide which to hire. We brought both students on, and what a terrific experience it turned out to be! Our PhD scientists were blown away by how fast they learned their way around our lab and began contributing in meaningful ways — they were smart, eager and interested, and had wonderful ‘can do’ attitudes. We were sad to see them leave at the end of the summer.”
R. Douglas Kahn Chairman & CEO, TetraGenetics
“Olin’s focus of integrating real-world engineering with design and entrepreneurship gave our team the skills we needed to identify opportunities and develop products to address those needs.” Ben Salinas
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Luminaire Coffee has its roots in the Olin Foundry, where the co-founders set out to build a computer-controlled coffee roaster that could make the perfect cup of coffee for everyone’s palate. After learning more about the market, the team started developing their very own brewing equipment, which proved to be a larger challenge than they expected.
Andrew Coats ’08 George Harris ’10 Chester Macklin ’10 Ben Salinas ’10 Carl Tappan ’11 Co-founders, Luminaire Coffee
With their passion, market understanding and engineering expertise behind them, the team shifted to working with other manufacturers to develop electronics for their coffee equipment. Today, the team has continued to grow and is joined by three other Olin grads, Andrew Price ’09, David Gardner ’11 and Neal Singer ’15. The team is developing electronics that power commercial espresso machines, which are used in coffee shops all around the world.
“One thing my Olin education taught me is persistence. Everyone at Olin encouraged me to work harder, think bigger and better, and never give up. I use that spirit every day as an engineer.” Kristen Dorsey ’08 Assistant Professor of Engineering, Smith College
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Kristen’s passion for electrical and computer engineering (ECE) is unwavering. After studying ECE at Olin for four years, she joined Carnegie Mellon University in 2008 as a graduate research assistant, eventually enrolling in its ECE PhD program, from which she graduated in 2013. She then went on to work as a UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow and as
a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC, San Diego. In July of 2015 Kristen joined Smith College as an assistant professor of engineering, where she teaches and heads her own research lab, The MicroSmithy. The lab’s mission is to train undergraduate women to undertake self-directed research projects and develop and characterize miniature and microscale sensors.
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“At Olin I learned firsthand that problem-solving doesn’t start or end with engineering. Appreciating the complexity of problems and embracing truly crossdisciplinary teams are what set me apart as an Olin engineer.” Avery Anderson ’08 Software Engineering, Minerva Project
From attending a startup college to starting one, Avery became a founding engineer for the Minerva Schools, an experimental university with campuses worldwide. Prior to joining Minerva in 2012, Avery
worked with Artaic, a company that robotically manufactures and installs mosaics. She then went on to be the first developer at Second Glass, where she served as a web and mobile engineer and built out an all-Olin development team.
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“My biggest surprise at Olin
was how diverse it was. With only about 300 students, it is truly remarkable how diverse the ideas, thoughts, processes and people are at Olin.� Varun Mani ’12 MBA Candidate, Harvard Business School Former Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Hololens
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Varun first joined Microsoft in the summer of 2010, following his sophomore year, as a project management intern. He returned to Microsoft every summer to intern in different departments. When he graduated in 2012 it was natural that Varun officially join the company as a program manager. He started out working on user experience
for Windows 8.1 and quickly rose through the ranks, serving as a program manager 2 for Hololens and Windows holographic by February 2014. Most recently he held the title of senior program manager for the same group until his departure in 2016, when he returned to the East Coast to pursue an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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graduate school stats
34% 81% 43% 5%
of all alumni have attended or are currently attending grad school; of those,
are in a STEM program earning degrees in robotics, biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science, among other areas are pursuing/ have completed a PhD are in/have finished medical school
49%
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TOP GRADUATE SCHOOLS Harvard University Stanford University MIT Carnegie Mellon University University of California, Berkeley Cornell University
of our first 4 classes have pursued advanced degrees since graduation.
SINCE 2006, OLIN HAS PRODUCED: 50 National Science Foundation
Graduate Fellowships (NSF GRFP)
4 Fulbright Scholars (33% of our applicants) 1 3 Goldwater Fellows 1 Gates Cambridge Scholar 1 Marshall Scholar 1 Critical Language Scholar
“Olin’s focus on self-reflection (helping each of us think about how we learn what we learn) is what inspired my interests in education and in research.”
Juliana Nazare ’14 Research Assistant and PhD Candidate, MIT Media Lab Following graduation from Olin, Juliana enrolled in the master’s program at the MIT Media Lab, where she joined the Lifelong Kindergarten Group and delivered her thesis, titled “Tools for Supporting English Language Learning in the Family Context.”
Upon completion of her master's, she began her PhD studies in the Social Machines Group at the MIT Media Lab, where she works on tools that enable social literacy learning for children and families. While at Olin, Juliana spent her summers working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and running web development workshops at the Startup Institute.
“The projects I worked on at Olin taught me to identify and learn new skills without hesitation. This adaptability helps me resolve the challenges I encounter doing interdisciplinary, experimental research.”
Leah Mendelson ’11 PhD Candidate, MIT Following graduation from Olin, Leah enrolled in MIT, where she has earned an MS in mechanical engineering. Upon completion of the master’s program at MIT, Leah began her doctoral studies, currently working with Professor
Alexandra H. Techet in the Experimental Hydrodynamics Lab. Her research combines fluid dynamics, biomechanics and computer vision to study fish swimming, particularly jumping and rapid maneuvering behaviors.
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“At Olin I was fortunate enough to work one-on-one with so many faculty whose mentorship and teachings helped shape both my time at Olin and my career path afterwards. This individualized attention is something I don’t think I could have found anywhere else.” Brendan Quinlivan ’14 PhD Candidate, Harvard
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During his tenure at Olin Brendan solidified his interest in mechanical engineering after serving as a research assistant two summers in a row working under Professor Conor Walsh at Harvard University. His research began with Dr. Walsh at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and continued in Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. Today he is a PhD student in
mechanical engineering at Harvard, where he is conducting research on wearable robotics in the Harvard Biodesign Lab. His research focuses on the development of a soft exosuit for gait assistance. Brendan is a Goldwater Scholar, has received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for his studies at Harvard and was a gold medalist in the International University Physics Competition in 2013.
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“Olin’s project-based approach gave me the vision to tackle large, unsolved problems: starting an education outreach program, making an LCD display from scratch in materials science, building an automated microfluidics research platform.” Heena Mutha ’10
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PhD Candidate, MIT
Heena developed her interest in clean energy research during a Summer Undergraduate Learning Internship studying wind turbine dynamics at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, sponsored by the Department of Energy in 2009. Meanwhile she was also fulfilling her interest in STEM education as director of Engineering Discovery, an organization at Olin that develops engineering and science
curricula and programs for K-12 students. Following graduation, she went on to study STEM education and programs in India, for which she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon her return to the U.S., Heena enrolled in a PhD program in mechanical engineering at MIT, where she conducts research in the design of capacitive deionization (CDI) systems for energy-efficient, portable water desalination.
FOR MORE STORIES ABOUT OLIN ALUMNI, CHECK OUT THE POST-GRADUATE PLANNING BLOG AT olin.edu/blog/career-and-graduate-stories/
FRANKLIN W. OLIN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Olin Way Needham, MA 02492-1200 781.292.2300 olin.edu meet.olin.edu
POST-GRADUATE PLANNING Sally J. Phelps Director 781.292.2281 sally.phelps@olin.edu Aarti Chellakere Assistant Director 781.292.2203 aarti.chellakere@olin.edu Suzanne Alcott Corporate Relations Coordinator 781.292.2282 suzanne.alcott@olin.edu
DESIGN: Sametz Blackstone Associates PRINCIPLE PHOTOGRAPHY: Alex Budnitz
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