Advisory Board 2017-2018
Yongjin Park
Yongjin is a Ph.D. student in the Biological Engineering department at MIT. He is from Seoul and Daejeon in South Korea and came to US for grad school. He majored Chemical Engineering and Biology at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and misled to MIT to pursue another five years of research. He is interested in playing music, biking, drinking (..!!) and synthetic biology (...?).
Claudia Pérez
Claudia is a EECS PhD student working at CSAIL in the AI & Robotics areas. Her alma mater is the Simon Bolivar University (Caracas, Venezuela), where she studied Electronics Engineering, a Masters in Mechatronics, and served as Assistant Professor. She truly enjoys listening to music, buying more books than can read, and travelling to observe different cultures and attempt to do photography.
Ivo Rosa Montenegro
Ivo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His specialization is in Geotechnical Engineering, with a focus on numerical modeling and reinforced earth structures. Born and raised in Brasilia, Brazil, he did his undergrad at the University of Brasilia. After graduating, he worked in the energy sector, designing dams for many places around the world. During his spare time, Ivo enjoys practicing sports (soccer and tennis are his favorite), hanging out with friends and traveling.
Samantha Dale Strasser
Samantha was born only days preceding a blizzard in Wausau, Wisconsin – possibly explaining her bias for the snowy months of New England weather. Before coming to MIT, she studied Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL and Physics at the University of Cambridge, UK. Here at MIT she is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science studying within Doug Lauffenburger's Research Group in Biological Engineering. Her research explores the development and application of quantitative techniques utilized in electrical engineering and computer science to questions in systems biology.
She can be found appreciating and creating art in a variety of places – from playing piano, cooking during Warehouse events, to enjoying a performance at the Hatch Shell. If you have questions regarding performances in the area, restaurants, or local museums please get in touch!
Sami Khan
Sami is a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. If he is not globe-trotting in some corner of the world, you will find him playing tennis at the Dupont courts or sailing on the Charles River.
Zsigmond Varga
Zsigi is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering. His specialization is in Soft Matter Physics, focusing on the analysis of microstructure and numerical simulation of colloidal dispersions with an application towards petroleum engineering and medicine. After spending the first 18 years of his life in Budapest, Hungary, he graduated from the University of Cambridge, UK. When not in the lab, Zsigi is outdoors (skiing and climbing), traveling or playing sports like squash, tennis and volleyball. He enjoys cooking, listening to podcasts and going out to (jazz) bars.