Ryan Drapeau (second from right) and his team head to a meeting
Google’s Student Blog – news and updates especially for students – has a feature article today on UW CSE bachelors student Ryan Drapeau, who’s interning at Google Mountain View this summer along with many of his UW CSE classmates. A few excerpts:
Can you provide us with a high-level description of your summer project?
I work on the Accessibility Engineering team in Google Research in Mountain View, CA. As a team, we build innovative products and solutions to help make the world’s information universally accessible to everyone. We ensure Google’s technologies are accessible in order to empower people with disabilities to be socially engaged, productive, and independent.
We all know Googlers and interns love the food and the other benefits. Outside of some of the well-known perks, what’s your favorite part about working at Google?
The people. I’m constantly surrounded by people that are smarter than me and I think that is important. It creates an atmosphere filled with learning and opportunities for improvement. There is an incredible amount of knowledge here and plenty more waiting to be discovered. To be able to be a part of that as an intern is a wonderful experience.
Among the UW CSE interns at Google MTV this summer are (l to r) Vivian Yu, Ryan Drapeau, Karolina Pyszkiewicz, Karan Goel, Aaron Nech, Eric Zeng, and Krista Holden – photographed on the Intern Boat Cruise
Read the entire interview here.
And a few statistics on UW CSE + Google:
- In the past two years, UW has sent 74 permanent employees and 93 interns to Google, 85% of them from CSE.
- Google hires graduate students from UW CSE in numbers nearly equal to undergraduates – for example, 19 Ph.D. alums in the past 5 years.
- 18 UW CSE students have received Google Graduate Fellowships or Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships.
- 20 UW CSE faculty members have had Google research support in the past few years.
- Picasa Face Movie, Open Data Kit, and the process structure of the Chrome browser are examples of interactions between UW CSE and Google that have made it out into the world.
And we equally value our relationships with Amazon, Microsoft, and many other companies that are helping to change the face of Seattle and the world!