Gordon Engineering Leadership Center Welcomes Scholars & Alumni to their Annual Fall Reception

Every year in the Fall, the Gordon Engineering Leadership Center invites board members, alumni and returning Gordon Scholars and Fellows to meet the new Gordon Scholars. This receptions serves to introduce the newly accepted aspiring technical leaders to seasoned members of this community, with the intent that they will learn about the opportunities and resources the Gordon Center provides. 

This year's cohort of undergraduate Gordon Scholars.

This year, UC San Diego Alumni member and Gordon Professional Fellow, Steve Hart, CTO and Co-founder of Viasat, and Pamela Cosman, the Jacobs School of Engineering’s Associate Dean for Students, joined the event. Both were able to connect with Gordon Scholars over dinner and icebreakers.  Mr. Hart was invited to give remarks welcoming students and sharing the need for engineering leadership in today's world.

Gordon Center Executive Director Ebonee Williams
pictured with this year's Graduate Gordon Scholars.

Gordon Center Executive Director Dr. Ebonee Williams explained, “This is how we like to start the beginning of the year. We always try to bring our alumni, our advisory board and the scholars together to get to know each other. The goal is to build a community of leaders. And while the reception is a lot of fun, it also helps us figure out who to pair for mentoring in order to help scholars reach their goals.” 

Enjoy viewing more photos of the event below:

Q&A with Janis Jimenez, intern at ViaSat

Janis Jimenez, a computer science major at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, is participating in ViaSat Inc.’s internship program this summer. The internship program selects student interns every summer from the best universities to work at ViaSat and contribute to real projects. For example, these projects include assisting in test and development of ViaSat satellite communications systems. Janis is working at the company’s Carlsbad office with the Architecture-based Enterprise Systems Engineering (AESE) department. In this Q&A (courtesy of ViaSat) she talked about her experiences.

 Q: What is the focus of your internship project?

A: Our department is AESE.  We are working on a web application that combines business metrics for the company along with security.  That was our project summary when we were hired. Things have stayed pretty vague because they have let us have some input.

Q: Why did you want to intern at ViaSat?

A: I heard from other people that I would be working with a team of interns. I have only been a single intern on a team of full time employees before. So it was something new to try out.

 Q: What is the best part about working with your team? Or supervisor?

A: The best part is that we are all in the same room, so we get to communicate a lot. If we get stuck we can just ask each other for help or we come up with better ideas by brainstorming on the whiteboard.

Q: What is the one thing you are hoping to accomplish during your internship?

A: I am hoping to pick up several new technologies, which I have already started doing. Specifically new languages and software.

Q: What has been your favorite meal at ViaSat so far?

A: I really like the meal at the most recent Tech Talk. It had two different types of pastas, bread, and a dessert. It was great.

Q: Favorite place to work on the Carlsbad campus?

A: I like to stay in the office. We have an office with a window and it is pretty nice in there.

Q: What is one word that describes your internship experience?

A: Collaborative

Q: After the internship ends, what is one thing you will take with you?

A: Experience of the office atmosphere, especially working with a team in a full time job.

Q: One fun fact about yourself!

A: I played the piano and clarinet. 

Star-studded line up for cybersecurity forum

PayPal. eBay. Lockheed Martin. These are some of the companies sending their tech leaders to talk about cybersecurity during a think-tank-style event at the Gordon Engineering Leadership Center Sept. 23 and 24 here at the Jacobs School.

 The featured speaker is the principal scientist for consumer security at PayPal, Markus Jakobsson, who will be speaking about the spiraling threat of online fraud and how to address is. Here is the abstract:

The Internet owes its growth and sustenance to commercial developments. However, the spectacular scalability of online fraud threatens this stability. While the human factor is a notable aspect of the problem, traditional security measures treat Internet security as a pure-bred technical challenge. Using examples relating to authentication, Nigerian scams and malware, I will show how we can improve our understanding of and defenses against online fraud by recognizing that it is a socio-technical problem.

 A number of Jacobs School faculty also will be speaking, including computer scientists Stefan Savage, Sorin Lerner, Hovav Schacham and Daniele Miccinacio. 

More info about the event here: http://bit.ly/1aWBsA6