Star Simpson and "Fake Bomb"

Since this is all over the news I thought I should comment. Star Simpson, a sophomore that lives at East Campus, went to the airport with an electronic name tag she made for herself . The device had LEDs on a circuit board that were in the shape of a star (her name is "Star"). State troopers thought she had a bomb and she was arrested at gunpoint. I want to make sure people knew that Star had no intention of causing such a ruckus. She made the name tag for MIT's career fair last Thursday. The playdoh in her hands was from the career fair.

I'm not trying to make an excuse for her or what happened. Star should have been smarter about wearing such a device to an airport, especially since there have been so many terrorist scares recently. It was clueless for her to do such a thing. To her, it was probably just a cool thing she made and wanted to wear it around and get some use out it, not realizing that it looked so suspicious. The MIT administration has commented on this incident, and I am disappointed with their report. Sure, they want to look good after this incident, but they could have easily clarified that Simpson was not carrying a "fake bomb" and that she didn't mean for this to happen. They still could have been stern in their comments about how she was clearly not thinking about her actions. It makes a big difference to the MIT community. This isn't something where she was like "Hey! I want to wear this so people will get freaked out and it will be totally hilarious." In that type of situation I would expect MIT to practically disown such a student. This was NOT such a case. I don't believe Simpson or MIT has handled this very well with the media. Hopefully it will all get sorted out soon. The MIT administration needs to recognize that some of the people here are extremely book smart, but not street smart. I think it's something that needs to be addressed and can be corrected.

New Layout

I just updated the layout for the blog. I hope everyone likes the new banner. I'm still not completely happy with it but over the next few weeks I'll do something more professional. At least it looks more MITish with the great dome on there. I will probably change it a bit more to see what looks the nicest.

Intel Internship (Summer 2007)

My internship at Intel was a great learning experience. I stayed in my family’s apartment during the weekdays and then drove back down to our house in Monterey on the weekends. My group had four other people in it. I worked in the Lithography/Etch department, but we did not have much to do with that. We were environmental processing engineers, so we dealt with things coming out of the fab (another way of putting it would be “waste” :-). I worked on three projects while I was there. The first was working on a bioreactor pilot to process wastes from the fab. I tested new feed solvents for denitrification for that. Unfortunately I was not able to continue this project because there were some complications with upper management. I also developed a model for ultra pure water in the fab using Visual Basic for Applications. Additionally, I completed fab emissions testing using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. I even got to visit the Intel facility in Hillsboro, Oregon twice. I felt special going on business trips and being an intern :-). I flew in Intel's jet (don't get excited, it is just a regular airplane...but they do have electrical outlets to charge your computer) which was pretty cool. We stayed there for a few days to do some work on the bioreactor pilot. Oregon is beautiful and extremely green. The Intel facility there is much larger than Santa Clara's because they actually make chips there.

I was very fortunate to work in a great group. I had lots of fun with my team members. They even took me out to lunch a few times! I also attended SEMICON west 2007, where companies that have anything do whatsoever with making semiconductors come and present their wares. There were cool robots that handled wafers. Nikon even had microscopes to analyze wafers. There were so many companies that had niche products just for semiconductor manufacturing. My group was very supportive of me and they always made sure I had something to do. Some of my other friends were not so lucky in that respect.

By the way, Intel pays their interns a lot of money for the summer, especially considering it is an internship. If your college is far away, they even give you relocation money to help pay for costs. Interns also get a share in the bonuses! It’s a really good deal.

My favorite part of the summer was hanging out with interns and other young employees. I mostly hung out with a group of about four other employees and their boyfriends/girlfriends. We went ice-skating one night (why I’ve been ice-skating in the middle of the summer in California but not in Boston in the winter I can’t tell you). I also got one of my intern friends hooked on the show, Firefly. There was an intern picnic that was also fun. I played football with the guys. I’m not the best at catching and throwing but I can do some pretty good defense…at least in touch football. We even visited the aquarium in Monterey one weekend, which I have seen dozens of times, but it’s still fun to visit every once in a while. My experience this summer would not have been the same without these awesome people! I am so glad the interns at Intel were more active than at Agilent. I had no problems getting together with people at all, unlike last summer. There were events going on almost every night!

If you want to see a hilarious video about Intel (you can even see the building I worked in!) click on the link below. Conan O Brien visited Intel and made fun of it. (And yes, there really is a plaque in the ground to tell you where to take a picture :-).

http://www.clipstr.com/videos/ConanVisitsIntel/

I really enjoyed working at Intel. Since Intel is a large company, it has its own problems, but working there for the summer was great. They were more organized than Agilent and the interns did many more activities. I also liked the combination of chemical engineering and electronics. I know now that I want to go more into an electronics area with my cheme degree. I highly recommend Intel for summer internships. It is possible that you might get a bad group and not accomplish much during the summer (this happened to one of my friends), but if you have a great group it's a good experience.

After my three-month internship was over, my family and I went to Maui for vacation. I had a nice, relaxing time before heading back to MIT.

Room for Junior Year in Simmons Hall

I'm all moved into my new room, so I thought I'd post some pictures. I have a single this year in Simmons Hall. Look at some of my first posts of each year if you want to see pictures of doubles in Simmons for my first and second years. My room faces Boston, so at night I see the pretty skyline :-). My single is pretty typical of Simmons' rooms. (In general, MIT dorm rooms are large). I actually have a small single. Next year as a senior I will be able to get a larger one if I choose to move to another room. In Simmons, freshmen and sophomores normally have doubles (maybe a few sophomores can get singles). Juniors and seniors normally get singles.