sdinnar’s Articles at WOW Fellowship Blog

Post 3: Wrapping up My Internship

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great” – Zig Ziglar

(Photo: Testing out the equipment and study we created in VR)

Good quotes are a double-edged sword. On the one hand they summarize in a concise way everything that you want your audience to understand, on the other hand, they prove to you again that their short truth could have saved you months of emotional struggle and complications. And yet, that is the biggest gift I have learned from my time in Germany: that although I know what overcoming challenge is, and how every start can be hard, experiencing that journey myself, that emotional rollercoaster from hardship to success, is one of the most satisfying and rewarding experiences.

As this internship comes to an end – I enjoy looking at it to understand the process I have experienced. The goals I had initially set for myself for the summer were to help me clarify my direction – and that was definitely accomplished. After long hours of coding and figuring out the correct technology for our experiment to finally finished the pilot study and finding significant results, I recognized three main career points that I learned:

Having Inspiring Co-Workers Makes A World of a Difference

I have been incredibly inspired by the awareness, intelligence, and care that the people around me in the lab have. This is not only prevalent in their incredible work, collaborations and projects, but also in their global awareness and care about issues that I would love to see more Americans talk about (healthcare, employment agreements, environmental action, etc). The result is a work culture that is fun and therefore more productive, but also one that impacts your attitude after work and your daily interactions.

I Need Direct Customer Interaction

I recognized this summer that direct customer interaction is something that I really value and care about. I want to see the smile when I hand someone a product they care about, I want to share the passion of producing a result that actually improves someone’s life, I want to be able to deliver happiness and satisfaction through shared human emotion. In a laboratory setting or when coding, the feeling of personal accomplishment is huge, but the direct-to-customer interaction is lacking. When I got to running subjects and talking with the people doing the pilot study my energy was so much higher and my motivation skyrocketed. I believe this internship helped me refocus my search for the type of work position I want in the future.

Embracing the Intersection of Disciplines

The project I am working on is a dream for me: combining VR and an audio simulation study. The pilot we conducted with a few subjects showed really interesting trends and made us think of new hypotheses to test. Although I did not have enough time to see the full project through, it is something that I am so grateful for being able to work on and I really hope to see more of this intersection between disciplines work in the future.

(Photos: Ehrenfeld wall art, Hamburg Speicherstadt)

In summary, when looking back I am incredibly grateful for the lab for embracing me into their “family” and being my guides for the duration of my time here. Their support has given me power to continue taking steps forward and to embrace the learning process. After finding positive trends and results from the initial pilot data (which is really exciting) I completely trust the team here to lead the project forward with the professionalism, humbleness, and hard work that they do. I believe the best advice I would give a student coming here would be to reach out for help and challenges when necessary and be open to recognizing where you need assistance and learning to maximize your own productivity. This is similar advice that I have seen across the software and technology field, internships are supposed to be a view into the real – world post university, where your own initiative will determine your success and work satisfaction.

I am ready to go back to Brandeis University with these new ideas – and to apply the energy, European mindset, and perspective I have been exposed to here while in Germany. There are so many small moments when abroad that cause you to appreciate how varied human society is; how fortunate I am to be in a place like Boston where I can grow, be challenged, and feel at home all at the same time.

Welcome to Cologne Germany – My Summer Journey

Germany has officially hosted me for a month now and the memories, times, work, and friends have been incredible. Despite having a few doubts before embarking on this internship – looking back this experience is becoming immensely more important for me personally and professionally each day.

Above all, Köln has surprised me in how multicultural and open it is – with festivals almost every weekend. Highlights of the past two weeks have included the Cologne Pride (CSD day) where 1.2 million people attended, and the Kölner Lichter Fireworks show. The investment that the city is putting into making these majestic events such a success is truly remarkable and have made my weekly schedule filled with fun social opportunities. Weekends have been reserved for seeing more of Germany, traveling to other cities including Bonn, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Berlin, and more to come. Although sometimes exhausting, traveling is fueling me with new power and energy that makes work-life balance so much more efficient. I’ve learned the importance of letting myself fully immersed in the freedom of exploring, not knowing where exactly my path will take me or what the plans are for the day, while also always embracing the local culture and trying new things. This mindset is something that I really want to take back with me to the United States.

Another important aspect of the German experience for me has been the openness to shared learning. Not only in terms of cultural events, Köln is similarly dedicated to encouraging this shared space in the more professional realm. An example can be the Nacht der Technik hosted at the end of June. Open to the public and attracting both young and old, the night was an incredible opportunity to travel around the city and see the showcasing of underground tunnels, aerospace engineer work, university research, and hospital technology in action. In addition to being inspired, it was also a nice time for our lab to showcase our virtual reality retail work and for me and another intern to see the city from a technical perspective.

Work-wise the internship has been proceeding well and fully challenging. We are adapting our timeline to holiday breaks, student exam schedules, and coding progress, but overall it is heading towards halfway completion. Coding for me in a new language has been a lot harder than what I had anticipated and I am struggling to be as optimistic as I usually am about bearing through hardship to recognize the full potential of figuring it out. Because computer programming, in general, is new for me and it’s a must to design code that is at the level necessary for professional research, the pressure has been pushing me further than I had expected. Although at this stage it is unclear how much we can achieve within a month’s time, I am already feeling the reward of doing things that I would have never been able to do if not for this lab and the opportunities the internship is providing me.

And this feeling, the unique reward from the extreme challenge, is what makes the internship experience so different and powerful compared to at the academic setting. As a student, there are always other motives such as grades, time management, and future employment that steer the focus from the goal of learning and challenging oneself. If school is easy, you say thank you and continue with another subject, if it is hard you accept a bad grade and try better next time. In the actual work environment, you are trying to achieve something that can be done in multiple ways and you must navigate your own path within pushing yourself, doing the best work, and maintaining relationships. The learning process is so much more focused and freeing than a college setting, but it is also more demanding. I hope that I will be able to incorporate, maintain, and grow this while finishing my studies at Brandeis University.

– Shai Dinnar ’20

Welcome to Cologne! My Summer Journey

It is junior year summer, and the primary goal for the coming months is to maximize the fun in the crazy challenge that I took upon myself by coming to Germany.

When I reflected over my last summer’s experience abroad I recognized my want to gain international work experience in Europe. A new continent, new country, new people, and new culture. Despite having eleven years of German language study and some German waltz moves, I had never actually visited the country – and I knew being thrown into a completely new scenario would bring the challenge and growth I was searching. This means, in practice, that this summer would function as a huge leverage point in my professional work experience, social environment, skills that I hone, and my personal journey.

So here I find myself, writing from TH Köln – Technology, Arts, Sciences (Cologne University of Applied Sciences), the largest applied sciences university in Germany, and quite an astonishing place. Although the building might be a bit old, the place is breathing of innovation, of “cultural and technological breakthroughs of high societal relevance” (as cited on the website), and of progress. The Deutz location where I work, which is on the “other side” of the Rhine as most Cologne people would say, is mainly for Engineering, Physics, Media, and Technology, so my Institute of Media and Imaging Technology at the Computer Graphics and Computer Science Lab fits in quite well.

Welcomed with an office view that is hard to beat (a 360 view including the Rhine, the famous Cathedral, and much more) and intelligent and fun professors and supervisors, I feel, after two weeks, quite at home here.

As fitting for my Experimental WOW Grant – the project I will be working on is similarly an intersection of topics and is literally an ‘experiment’. The lab work conducted here specializes in virtual and augmented reality, with our project’s focus being examining presence and collaboration within a virtual environment as a response to auditory signals. Although I hadn’t known what project I would be working on prior to coming to Germany, the work fits quite well with my lab work at the Memory and Cognition Lab at Brandeis University – an added bonus. What is especially interesting is that the projects we are working on are collaborations not only between centers within the university but also between the university and industry. The result is science that is directly applicable to real-world problems facing the industry and society currently, something that I really care about in my education goals.

Rhine River during sunset with the Cologne Cathedral in the background

In addition to gaining a comprehensive understanding of German culture and life, I am hoping to attain a few goals professionally. Mainly these include planning a research project in XR, coding and building the necessary VR environment, running participants to gather data, and hopefully having the time to analyze and synthesize findings. This internship – like any – is a race against time, with a steep learning curve in both social, professional, and academic goals. I could not be more excited, energized, and interested in this process of being exposed to such new topics while in a learning and supportive environment.

Shai Dinnar ’20