A huge component of the LGO program is the internship/fellowship/thesis each student does with a partner company, and we recently got paired with our projects!
I am excited to go to Novartis in Siena, Italy for six months starting in June! I will be completing a resource and inventory optimization project in a bulk manufacturing facility within the Vaccines and Diagnostics division. It will be great mix of utilizing my new experiences in school (particularly with optimization and modeling, which are really cool) and my experience in pharma and bulk manufacturing (and growing knowledge, with classes like Biochemical Engineering). Additionally, I will write my engineering-and-management thesis on my project.
About a quarter of the LGO students have international internships this year, and we are doing lots of travelling during our weekends. Two of my classmates, Todd and Dannielle, are also completing their internships in Italy at the same site of Novartis. My husband Chris and son Nolan are looking forward to moving to Italy also. We know Nolan is because his favorite food is “pasta”!
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Now, I’ll describe a little more about the internship program and how it works. This should be helpful for the prospective students that read my blog! This is my take on the process; check out links to the LGO site to explain some of the program details.
There are about twenty partner companies who submit project descriptions in advance, the students review the postings, then sign up for interviews. After interviews, the companies and the students rank each other, and an algorithm does the pairing with a ‘stable match’, meaning there are no pairings where both parties would be happier. (think like a dating pairing) There are typically several/many extra projects compared to students to help facilitate better matches.
Since Noramay and I are chairs of the internship committee, we actively implemented and improved the program for this year and got to understand the algorithm process quite well. Our year, common to most, the majority of people are quite happy with their pairings, however, there are usually a handful of students and companies/projects that are disappointed with their pairings since some projects or students are quite popular.
You may have also heard of “on-cycle” and “off-cycle” - about 1/4 of the LGO students complete their internship from February-August, and then return for 2 semesters during their last year of school. This works better for some companies and students, and they have a smaller but similar process for internship pairing.
I mentioned that we do a thesis on our internship. I have talked with some prospective students in the fall who were a little weary of the thesis - really, don’t be scared. Its on your project that you spent six months doing! You will know it better than anyone.
The internships for each student pay for our generous fellowship towards our tuition at LGO. The main disadvantage seen is that students are limited to a given set of internships only at partner companies, but we do have ability to influence projects and companies given the interest of the class.
Overall, I think the LGO Internship Program is a great opportunity only provided within LGO!! Stay tuned for updates as we begin our adventures in Italy! http://kaco1.tumblr.com
