Hey world!

Before I get into the specifics of the latter days of my internship, I’d like to update you on more of the events that occured in the latter part of my NYC days…

NYC

Ever since starting my internship here, my view on New York City has turned 180 degrees. The town that I used to consider as a hotchpotch of concrete and traffic jams is now a city where I’m imagining myself living in very confortably for an equally very long amount of time. It has restaurants and shops of the perfect combinations of cultures around the world that exemplfy the Salad Bowl Theory of immigration into the United States, which makes the city a vibrant and alive place to be. In addition, there is a booming technology sector that is quite not so saturated as that of Silicon Valley, so CS majors like me have a better chance of finding professional success here than in its western counterpart. Lastly, if one ever gets sick of the two positive traits listed above, there’s always Central Park just a couple blocks away:

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Example 1

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Example 2

Other than falling in love with NYC, I’ve also met someone very special who resides nearby. Mr. Mehmet Oz, more commonly referred to as Dr. Oz, is someone who I consider a rolemodel with shared beginnings. We both are originally from Turkey, we both came to live in the US because of our parents’ occupations, and we both ended up at Harvard College (albeit not in the same house, he was in Kirkland, and I’m in Winthrop). I hope this point will not be where our similarities conclude. During our talk, we extensively discussed the potential of machine learning in the field of medicine, pros & cons of working in the field of medicine, and lastly (like every true Turk knows) on the current-day politics in Turkey. Although I don’t plan to go directly into the field of medicine, I do hope to use my more technical skills in a way that will perhaps aid me in becoming as influencial as Dr. Oz has become.

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Dr. Oz and I

IBM Research

As of now, I’ve finally finished my reserach internship at IBM T.J. Watson Research, and I’m happy to conclude that it was, I believe, a great success! We started with an original problem, researched ways of solving it, implemented the best way we found, and finally presented & defended our solution in front of very smart people. I would say in the past 12 weeks, I have achieved a lot for a computer science research and development internship. Of course, I could not have done any of these without two people in particular:

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Canturk Abi, I, Shripad

Canturk Isci (left, my manager) and Shripad Nadgowda (right, my mentor) are those who I hope people starting their professional careers will have the chance to work with. It was a true pleasure working with both Canturk and Shripad, for they were a big reason why I was so productive and fruitful during these last 12 weeks. To future IBM T. J. Watson Research interns out there, if you ever get the opportunity to work with these two, I would say jump on it in a heatbeat!

Also, look at this picture of the summer 2017 interns at IBM Research… Wouldn’t you want to be in this photo as well?

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IBM Research interns say hi!

Epilogue

As to what I will do now until school starts, I’ll be in Shanghai, China, for ten days teaching with the Harvard Summit for Young Leaders in China conference! More on that will be in my next blog post…

Until then, peace!