Meet the VI-A Bloggers
Get to know the VI-A bloggers, both students, staff, faculty and invited guest bloggers. Read their bio excerpt below and visit their individual blogs (click on each blogger’s photo or name below) and/or sign up for updates.
Steve Herbst
“My research interests include precision analog electronics and feedback control systems. In the realm of precision analog electronics, I think that brain interfaces and un-manned space exploration are among the research areas that interest me the most. In the area of control theory, I have become really interested in the field of robotics inspired by animal movement (which is less constricted and more “natural” than many of today’s robots).”
Xiawa Wang
“I come from a city called Shenyang in northeastern part of China, where the winter is even colder than here in Boston. When I came to MIT I started with a major in course 2, but graduated with an SB in 6-1. At Robert Bosch RTC (summer 2009), I worked on pressure sensor designs and squeeze film damping simulation in the MEMS group. This is the starting point for my “MEMS interest”.
Anh D. Nguyen
“Hi, I am Anh D. Nguyen (or Nguyễn Đặng Việt Anh in Vietnamese). I’m originally from Hanoi, Vietnam. I have been to Las Vegas for a year, MIT for 5 years with 9 months of Beijing in between for VI-A program, then probably up next to Google in California. No matter where I was, I could not be less happy than when I met amazing people and worked on wonderful projects from making game-sharing sites for children to creating an entertaining exercise mobile app…”
Thilani Bogoda
“Ayubowan! My name is Thilani Bogoda and I just graduated from MIT in Electrical Science and
Engineering. I came to MIT hoping to do computer science but fell in love with circuits after taking 6.002.
I’m currently doing my MEng research at Linear Technology in North Chelmsford. LT is a great place.
With so many MIT graduates around, I feel like I’m still at MIT!”
Cyril Lan
“Hi, my name is Cyril Lan, and I’m rising 5th year Master’s student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I came to MIT in 2007 from Germantown, Maryland, where I lived before coming to MIT. My research is in the field of image processing using convex optimization techniques. Most images of everyday objects have a large degree of regularity and can be represented using sparse matrices (a matrix where most elements are zero).”
Isabel Mattos
“Hi, everyone. I received undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Management from MIT and I’m currently completing my MEng degree in EECS. I’m very passionate for both technology and business, and have worked for MIT, Microsoft, Google, Deutsche Bank and Ooyala, but I learned that entrepreneurship is what I like the most.”
Ernie Park
“Hi! My name is Ernie and I am a Junior from right outside Princeton, NJ. Although I didn’t know what major I wanted to be coming into MIT, I have since decided on Computer Science and haven’t looked back since. I’m excited for my first internship this summer at Ooyala and I hope it will help me focus on what parts of Computer Science I am interested in…”
Jessica Lin
“I’m Jessica, a native of northeastern Massachusetts. Though I wasn’t physically far from Cambridge, I’ve come a long way to get to the MIT VI-A program. When I was in kindergarten, I thought computers were for DOS games. In middle school, I thought AOL was the internet. In high school, I programmed almost exclusively in Visual Basic. I may never have righted my ways had I not come to MIT…”
Kevin Zheng
“Hi everyone. My name is Kevin Zheng. I was originally from Shanghai, China and moved to Los Angeles with my parents to start my high school career. After I came to MIT, I decided to pursue my interest in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and I am currently Junior who is a proud 6-2! I am extremely excited about my upcoming internship with Analog Devices this summer. Both signal processing and circuit design have been my biggest interests, …”
Geza Kovacs
“I’m Geza, a Junior from Southern California who’s studying Computer Science at MIT. I have a particular obsession with languages, both human and computer. My idea of a fun programming project is one in a language I’ve never used, or better yet, have never seen or heard of. The kinds of trees I dream about have words and syntactic features hanging off of them.”
Kathy Sullivan
“Hi everyone! I’m Kathy Sullivan the VI-A Administrator. I began my career at MIT in 1965 as the Secretary to the Head of the Materials Processing Laboratory (now known as the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity) in Mechanical Engineering. I left the institute to raise my family and returned to MIT in 1998 as the Assistant to the Director of LIDS (Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems) in EECS.”
Mark Zahn
“Welcome to the VI-A web-site and blog! VI-A was founded at MIT in 1917 and is 94 years old. I’m Professor Markus Zahn, Director of VI-A in EECS since l994. I am also a graduate of the VI-A Program (1965-1968) where I worked at Raytheon. My VI-A experience changed me from being a passive student to being an active contributing researcher and gave me the needed credentials to be admitted to the MIT doctoral program and then to be an EE professor for my career.”
