Xinran Yuan is a visual artist in New York City. She has exhibited internationally in the U.S., Iceland, China, and Switzerland. Xinran has shot documentaries in Iceland, was an artist resident at Banff Research in Culture in partnership with Liverpool Biennial, and has recently been selected for a year-long residency at the Center for Book Arts, New York. She currently manages projects for the internationally-renowned artist Cai Guo-Qiang.
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Riley Soward is a sophomore at Boston College and a founder of Campus Insights, a startup that assists companies with UX/UI testing and marketing research among college student users. Riley is warm, energetic and a constant learner; he might be just starting out, but he was just selected as one of Boston's top 25 founders under 25. Now to some of us it feels like everyone on campus is selling their startup to Google, and you are there on your couch eating ramen noodles. You must be wondering: is it real? How do you start a career in startups? Most importantly, how do you do it? Whenever I ask people about their favorite part of college, the answer is almost always the same: "Awesome people!" Well, I agree -- college is a time when you are surrounded by so many brilliant and passionate people; your professors, your classmates, your resident assistants, and pretty much everyone is a genius. There is so much energy and joy on campus! So, everyone around you seems to be passionate about something, yet few people actually turn their passion into sustainable professional success. How do you build a career in a field that you are passionate about? How do you turn your interests into clear success down the line? In the next few posts, I will talk about the link between passion and action in a few fields, starting with my personal favorite field of public health today Co-written with Alicia Czarnecki. Is your favorite means of procrastination browsing the images of tropical beaches and snowy Christmas markets? Are you dreaming about being with your family right now? We agree - travelling in college is the best. Let's turn your procrastination into something productive and find a perfect international research opportunity for next year! Co-authored with Patrick Ghadban. "Just Ask." I must admit, this sunshine-and-serendipity advice sounds more fitting from my friend who is an aspiring astrologist, than from a presumably cold-hearted data-driven engineering professor at one of the U.S.'s most prestigious educational institutions. Yet, apparently courage, networking, and preparation lead far in any field. Last time, we spoke with student researchers from the University of Notre Dame and Boston University (want to work with Red Sox surgeons? Read about it here). Today, we decided to ask faculty members for advice on scoring the research project of your dreams. What do the winning students do? How do they prepare? What do they bring to meetings with faculty? (lucky charms, anyone?) Are you thinking of research project? Is everyone you know going to Europe and Latin America to explore medieval history, or cure Alzheimer's, while you feel like you don't even know where to start? How do you actually identify some projects and find a faculty member? No fear; in this blog post we'll deconstruct the process of starting research by using examples of three fantastic students that already figured it all out. Notice that none of them had any prior experience!! When Ridwan Alam just started working in a lab as a freshman at Wayne State University in Michigan, he did primarily mechanical work, but by the sophomore year, his research became more sophisticated and demanding. "I grew cells," he said. "I had to be on the schedule of these cells, not on my schedule, even if that meant spending Friday nights and weekend mornings in the lab." His persistence paid off - by his senior year, Ridwan published two papers in the top Neurooncology journal and was admitted to some of the most prestigious medical schools in the country. He is now at Johns Hopkins, where he is now studying to become a neurosurgeon. |
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