2021 Intern Awards Recognize Top Talent Across Research Park
The Research Park gathered to celebrate the most outstanding interns across its 120+ companies at the 15th annual Intern Awards, the longest-running event in the Research Park.
Fittingly, the ceremony was held on Thursday, July 29, National Intern Day.
The students honored as finalists and winners encompass a variety of disciplines, majors, and colleges from across the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, exemplifying the nature of interdisciplinary work that happens at Research Park companies.
This summer intern program format has been like no other, with some students working on-site, some completely remote, and some working in a hybrid format.
Regardless, these interns formed connections with peers and co-workers and made lasting impressions on their supervisors.
These interns have impacted the Research Park and their employers through the countless projects they conceived, worked diligently on, and followed through to completion.
Thank you to all the managers who took the time to nominate their students. Thank you to the panel of professionals who judged these awards.
Award Categories:
- Entrepreneurial Leadership in a Startup
- Most Outstanding Undergraduate Intern
- Most Outstanding Graduate Intern
- Best Technical Innovation Award
- Best Non-Technical Innovation Award
- Most Competent and Collaborative Team
Entrepreneurial Leadership in a Startup
Olivia Rentz PSYONIC Mechatronics Intern
Undergraduate in Biomedical Engineering
“Olivia has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to manage multi-disciplinary tasks on our team. When she started in January 2021, she was tasked with several manufacturing & assembly projects which she quickly mastered. Several weeks into her internship, we were shocked to learn that she had no prior experience with any of the tools she was using to complete these tasks and had nonetheless learned to use them skillfully in a short period. Olivia has exhibited an absolute exemplary work ethic: always giving 100% on every task, eager to take on more responsibilities, and frequently staying late in the evenings to finish important projects or assist the rest of the team with crunch deadlines. She has driven for hours across the midwest to visit patients in person and help them install and troubleshoot their new prosthetic hand. Overall, she fully exemplifies the qualities of an incredible intern who goes above and beyond, and would be an extremely deserving recipient.”
Finalists:
Daniel Gealow, SimBioSys Computational Biologist Intern
Undergraduate in Biomedical Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
Molly Izzi, Ascent Integrated Tech Graphic Design Intern
Undergraduate in Graphic Design | College of Fine & Applied Arts
Most Outstanding Undergraduate Intern
Daniel Polites, State Farm Actuarial & Modeling Intern
Undergraduate in Actuarial Science | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
“Daniel has been taking on a project which will provide the ratemaking guidance from the farm and ranch line of business at State Farm, using a multivariate Generalized Linear Model, to help State Farm better match price to risk. Daniels sets as a great role model of continuously seeking ways of working more effectively and efficiently. The planning efforts of fun activities Daniel leads help shape the RDC philosophy of “the internship is not only about work but also having fun at work”, and to make the internship a very unique experience for our interns. Daniel is considered a strong technical lead on his projects”
Finalists:
Nicholas (Nico) Lavalle , Actuarial & Modeling Intern
Undergraduate in Statistics | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Xi (Adam) Zhao, Corteva Data Science Intern
Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
Neil Kaushikkar COUNTRY Financial Software Developer – Project Manager
Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
Most Outstanding Graduate Intern
Eddie Chapman, AbbVie Library Information Specialist
Graduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
“For the almost four years he has been with us, he has truly been a collaborator on these projects, and he takes full ownership of them, responsibility for them, and pride in them, as he should. Eddie will fix the bugs, meet deadlines, explain clearly why some can’t be met, support a release, and even present his work to customers – all this is true. His development work supporting SimpleTools lets users design or reuse the strategies they want using the power of ontologies, and then a bot can perform repetitive tasks of waiting for results and sending them to the customer on the back end. Another tool, LISToolkit, for which Eddie is responsible for most of the development, allows search team members to perform text and hedge manipulation at the click of a button that in the past had required an open notepad document and knowledge of regular expressions – very error-prone work for a human that Eddie’s tools make so much simpler and consistent.”
Finalists:
Aadish Naik, Brunswick Perception Engineering Intern
Graduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Anisha Jauhauri, Corteva Software Development Intern
Graduate in Information Management
Pranay Thangeda, Corteva Summer Research Intern
Graduate in Aerospace Engineering
Best Technical Innovation Award
Arif Syraj , EarthSense Data Science Intern
Undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
“Arif has exemplified the top-notch go-getter attitude that a startup employee needs to have to be successful. He has shown great initiative, starting off as a volunteer, and quickly climbing the ranks to be paid intern, and now has a full-time offer from us. The algorithm developed and deployed by Arif has been extensively tested against manual measurements and it has shown a strong correlation. This is a very positive move since our customers typically went with our competition (drone companies) to do the measurement of the height trait, but now our data shows that we are more accurate and reliable than drone measurements.”
Finalists:
David Liu Yahoo Intern I, Technica
Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
Aman Khinvasara, AARP Strategic Integration & Talent (ITS) Intern
Undergraduate in Computer Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
Gautham Krishnan, Corteva Contracted Student Researcher
Graduate in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Best Non-Technical Innovation
Anna Chi, Brunswick i-Jet Industrial Design Intern
Undergraduate in Industrial Design | College of Fine & Applied Arts
“Anna has worked on a variety of really cool projects revolving around user experience, user interface, heuristic testing, feature ideation, and newsletter creation. For the non-technical innovation, I want to focus on her newsletter efforts. Some of the challenges of being an innovation center in a large corporation are to stay connected with the businesses, remain top of mind, portray business value, and create opportunities for transition into full-time employment. Anna has taken the newsletter from a quick description of UIUC research into a wonderful tool of promotion, engagement, and opportunity. The newsletter now has a heavy readership from presidents, vice presidents, CEOs, CTOs, directors, engineers, UX members, designers, etc. I know the readers are engaged because I get questions and comments from many of them, including regular engagement from the CTO and CEO. The article has provided our students a platform to voice a point of view on technology projection and an opportunity to highlight their career vision for all to read. It helps to create visibility for full-time recruiters to see the talent pipeline we have created. It shows the projects that we are working on and upcoming opportunities for engagement.”
Finalists:
Matthew Waldinger, AbbVie Visual Designer Intern
Undergraduate in Graphic Design | College of Fine & Applied Arts
Most Competent and Collaborative Team
Ameren Innovation Center Data Team:
Steven Brodijan, Undergraduate in Computer Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
Sarah Simpson, Graduate in Mathematics
Edward Tang, Graduate in Technology Management
Jeremy Livshots, Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
Katie Kabbes, Undergraduate in Psychology | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Ashley Alfred, Graduate in Mathematics
Xander Pero, Undergraduate in Industrial Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
Maury Lira, Undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
“The Ameren Innovation Center Data team is an extremely high-functioning group of multi-disciplinary interns. The team has produced exceptional results for the business. The summer work alone has transformed the perception of the Innovation Center’s role in Ameren’s Data Analytics division. The intern team found an error in the production of the smart meters’ time reporting system, altering a key part of Ameren’s customer billing system Marketing Propensity Modeling. The team developed a full-fledged-data pipeline to simplify and automate the process for gathering data and returning model results. I truly am impressed with their contributions this summer. I look forward to the next of interns the University of Illinois supplies my team”
Finalists:
ETC Hoteling Team/Synchrony:
Emily Tokarski, Graduate in Aerospace Systems Engineering
Anushka Bose, Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
Amy Chen, Undergraduate in Information Systems | Gies College of Business
Emily Vera, Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
Wanxing Dai, Undergraduate in Data Science | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Pabba Ashish, Graduate in Electrical Engineering
Wei Yang, Graduate in Electrical Engineering
Rudra Patel, Undergraduate in Finance and Accounting | Gies College of Business
Vinayak Adukia, Graduate in Financial Mathematics
Brunswick i-Jet Material Science Team:
Quentin Rizzardii, Graduate in Material Science
Vaachit Srikumar, Undergraduate in Material Science | Grainger College of Engineering