From Cambridge to Silicon Valley and back again, Harvard’s resources and networks help students turn ideas into social change
Undergraduate and graduate students from six schools at Harvard rode a bus to Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto. Photo courtesy of Matt Weber, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
In business, one well-prepared conversation can change everything.
Rebecca Kantar ‘14 knows how that works. During a trip to Silicon Valley with other Harvard students in January, she sat down with a mentor to get advice on her young start-up, BrightCo.
She left that meeting with a verbal commitment for seed funding.
“I was in shock when I got back to the bus,” she recalls with a laugh.
Serendipity will always play a role in entrepreneurship, but it takes far more than a fortuitous meeting to translate an idea into reality. For Kantar, that one moment was backed by months of network-building, ideation, and careful pitch preparation.
Here in Cambridge, an ever-expanding web of support, through teaching and advising, is helping students create new networks, gain hands-on experience, and ultimately make a difference in the world.
“In entrepreneurship, if you learn the process it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll succeed,” explains Fawwaz Habbal, Executive Dean for Education and Research at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). “But is it possible for me to help you through education to do extremely well? I think the answer is yes.” [more]
Made popular by the novels of Isaac Asimov and the film I, Robot, among others, the field of robotics offers an intellectually stimulating and exciting environment for those who pursue it. And like other technological industries in the twenty-first century, the field continues to evolve with impressive speed, leaving the complacent and stagnant behind.
The Office of Career Services recently invited two representatives from iRobot to visit Harvard’s campus and share an “insider’s perspective” on the robotics industry. Presenting on the second floor of Maxwell Dworkin, the heart of Harvard’s computer science studies, the representatives explained the internal structure and current initiatives of iRobot while using their experience to share more general thoughts on the industry at-large.
Founded in 1990, iRobot is the only company in the world with an exclusive focus on robots. It claims $1.5 billion annually in revenue and boasts an employee pool of over 750 members. Their robots span all kinds of uses and environments, from national defense and law enforcement to home and office support. Among its more well-known products is the Roomba, now several generations into development.
Employees develop robots on three “horizons”: horizon 1, supporting what’s on shelves today and making incremental changes as necessary; horizon 3, research and development into the robots we’ll see 5-10 years from now; and horizon 2, product development providing a bridge between the other two. iRobot particularly prides itself on designing robots “that make a difference” – for example, the company provided robots to repair the recently damaged nuclear sites in Japan.
Other projects include:
AwareHead Autonomy Payload:
A sensor that enables operations in crazy environments.General Object Recognition:
Ability to differentiate objects (e.g. a car versus a horse versus a plane).Compliant End Effectors:
Robotic arms and fingers that are flexible and robust.Transhibian:
A “robotic turtle.”Modular Compliant Suspension Package:
A robot that can travel smoothly over rough terrain.Compact Untethered Flexure Robot:
A robot that “slides” and can move under doors.
Where do these ideas come from? “Sometimes it starts as a joke,” the engineers explained with a chuckle. The joke leads to a sit-down brainstorming session, where team members make rolling pitches and together determine what is needed for the project. “Turns out, you can do a lot of things,” they declared. “It just takes a little innovation.”
Now, a career in robotics typically begins with an internship, explained the iRobot representatives. During this time, “a company tries you out, and you decide whether you like it,” with a great deal of hiring potential. Entry-level employees then begin as junior level engineers of all types, either in product development or research. How do you grow in the company? Just like most careers, you need to “execute well,” debugging prototypes and proving your skill. Depending on your demonstrated passion and skill, there is limited flexibility in the projects you can take on, though ultimately your work depends on the contracts you secure. You may also have opportunities to see a project through to completion, though this is not the default scenario.
Companies in robotics understand that most colleges provided little or no opportunity to gain experience in the field. Thus, they’re looking for interest and drive, and a demonstration that you know and understand basic technologies. Of course, if possible, you should seek employment in a university robotics lab. As the representatives explained, knowing the “nitty gritty details of robotics” will make you a “bright star” in any application pool.
“Knowing the “nitty gritty details of robotics” will make you a “bright star” in any application pool.”
Ultimately, what makes robotics a field? The need to incorporate multiple scientific disciplines, since “everything affects everything,” and the challenge of weighing so many different variables in an industry still in its infancy. Understand these challenges, and develop the skills to address them, and you will lead a successful career. Good luck!
—Nicandro Iannacci, ’13
Two AWESOME events during the upcoming “New Pathways: Science & Engineering” Career Week—who doesn’t love video games and robots?
Explore Careers in the Video Game Industry
Tuesday, March 6, 4:00-5:00pm
OCS Conference Room, 54 Dunster Street
Games are for everyone! Games aim to entertain, but they can also educate and serve as a vehicle of artistic expression. No matter where you’re headed, don’t miss this chance to learn how you could be part of this exciting medium. This would be of interest to those studying: VES/Art, computer science, education, business/economics, English/history, psychology, and anyone with an interest in entertainment, marketing, and using games to engage or educate a broad audience.
Panelists from companies including Harmonix, Brass Monkey, and Granite Ventures (seeking to fill positions within gaming companies in their portfolio).
Please register through Crimson Careers.
Explore Engineering Careers: Robotics
Wednesday, March 7, 4:00–5:00pm
Maxwell Dworkin 119, 33 Oxford Street
Are you fascinated by the role of robots in our lives? Interested in learning about possible career paths related to this burgeoning industry? Attend this program to learn about getting experience and launching a career in robotics. Panelists and robot demonstrations from companies including iRobot and Feder Aerospace!
Please register through Crimson Careers.
“Follow yourself,” Mark Zuckerberg preached in front of an awed audience of Harvard students on Monday, November 7th.
A Harvard dropout most renowned for his success in following his dreams, Zuckerberg was welcomed warmly back to campus by students and administrators. Over 200 students gathered in Farkas Hall to hear the CEO of Facebook speak during his first return to his alma mater since he left Harvard in 2004. Students first applied to attend the event before being notified if they earned a seat in the lecture; a waitlist of eager students also lingered outside the event hoping they would be able to fill in any empty seats. The vast majority of the audience consisted of students interested in computer science, engineering and applied math.
Sitting alongside Zuckerberg on stage were Mike Schroepfer, the vice-president of engineering at Facebook, Jocelyn Goldfein, a director of engineering at Facebook, as well as CS50 instructor David Malan who facilitated discussion throughout the conversation.
Much to the audience’s happiness, Zuckerberg spent a considerable amount of time reminiscing about his time at Harvard. A resident of Straus and then Kirkland, he spoke a lot about his strong inclination to experiment with programming, and to work incessantly on different projects until one clicked. “I just like making stuff,” he said. “When I was here, I was really just focused on hacking together a bunch of things and seeing what worked.”
While at Harvard, Zuckerberg built several websites that did not catch on in the same colossal way that his Facebook project did. These sites ranged from a “Course Match” website to help students plan and share their shopping week courses to a website called “6 Degrees of Harry Lewis,” which linked people appearing in the Crimson by finding their connections to the most frequently mentioned person: computer science professor Harry Lewis. He encouraged his audience to experiment with building different programs as well, and never to fear making mistakes. “Learning to engineer is kind of like riding a bike,” he advised. “You pick up different skills on the way; you learn something new with each project you do.” While he acknowledged that Facebook wrestles with bugs and problems in itself, users put up with them because the site is “fundamentally giving them value.”
In the beginning, Zuckerberg did not intend for Facebook to become a company – he simply thought it was a cool idea, and was a project he was interested in making for his friends. After divvying out roles to his two roommates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg was able to promote the website until the project grew too big to contain at Harvard. “It was the momentum that kept us growing,” he said. “The users really carried us.” Since its conception, Facebook usage has grown exponentially: besides its increased user count growing to over 800 million people in the past 7 years, the average amount of information that a given person shares on Facebook is doubling every year.
Throughout his speech, Zuckerberg encouraged his undergraduate audience members to take chances in following their passions. In college, he and his friends would always muse over innovative ideas and what they thought was going to happen with social networks, but never expected that they would be the ones to accomplish the change. “Who are we, college students, to think we could build this?” they asked themselves. In retrospect, Zuckerberg said that they “thought the big companies – like Microsoft, Google, Amazon – would be the ones to take charge, but they just never got around to it.” Even Schroepfer acknowledged the incredible nature of Zuckerberg’s success: “It is shocking to think that one person couldn’t have an impact on the world, but then realize that they really, really could.”
While Zuckerberg’s return held sentimental value because of his Harvard connection, his visit was primarily a recruiting trip. He spoke of the Facebook office as one in which innovation is not only encouraged: it is necessary. According to Zuckerberg, Palo Alto’s Facebook office is a “culture of hacking and prototyping” in which engineers are constantly experimenting with new prototypes – experiments that often end up creating the best features on the website. Although the Facebook website caters to a similar amount of customers as other large internet websites, their team is much smaller, consisting of only about 700 engineers. What’s their criteria for hiring? For one, Schroepfer said that engineers need to be “excited about something in their lives, ideally about building things.” Aside from that, Schroepfer and Zuckerberg both agreed on the importance of being able to recognize the hardest leverage of a project to work on, and to figure out the problem in order to create an efficient final project.
One student asked Zuckerberg what he would be doing right now were he not the frontrunner of this billion-dollar company. “When I was at Harvard, I went to one of Bill Gates’ talks. The advice that he gave was that everyone should go take time off to work on something,” Zuckerberg replied. “Harvard is great because you can take as much time off as you want.” With this in mind, Zuckerberg said he might have gone back to finish his career at Harvard if the Facebook endeavor had failed.
“After all, my little sister made a bet that she’d finish college before me,” he laughed. “Oh yeah, she finished already. And it’s okay. I gave her the fifty dollars.”
— Julia Eger, ‘14
