Hey everyone! We had another awesome weekend and are excited to share the photos from it.

July 21, 2012

We went to Washington, D.C. today and had a blast exploring our nation’s capital. Students went to museums such as the Spy Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum, and the famous monuments and government buildings of D.C.

In the evening, we went to Georgetown for dinner!

The Hope Diamond at the Natural History Museum.

The escape chute used to rescue the Chilean miners.

Some of the flight simulators at the Air and Space Museum - there are more that you can’t see!

Nick and Brett, pilot and gunner, are matching. (:

Vietnamese espresso in Georgetown!

July 23rd, 2012

Today, we went to King of Prussia Mall for a few hours to shop and look around. There’s not much else to say about this. We had an incredible Monopoly game at night that we hope to replicate this week once everyone’s done with their big projects.

Intense Monopoly in progress.

Next up, we’ll be listening to a speech from Josh Kopelman, M&T alum that founded half.com and now works at First Round Capital, a venture capital firm. We’ll also be listening to a speaker from the bioengineering department, making organic LEDs in a materials science lab, and working on final projects.

Hey guys! Time for an update of the most recent two days of M&TSI.

July 19th, 2012

On Thursday, we took a field trip to Radiate Media in Malvern, PA. The founder and CEO of Radiate Media, Chris Rothey, is a former M&T alum. He also founded Traffic.com, which uses proprietary wireless technology that Mr. Rothey himself developed whilst at Penn, to collect rich data about traffic.

Mr. Rothey ended the trip with a cherry on top, sharing a very personal story about his relationship with the late Dr. Ketterer and what it meant to him to be an M&T.

At night, the students were able to pick which restaurant they wanted to go to! Some went to Pod, an Asian fusion restaurant; others went to Pat’s and Gino’s, the two most famous Philly cheesesteak restaurants in the city; and the rest went to the Walnut restaurants on campus - Chipotle, Bobby’s Burger Palace, Hummus, and Sweetgreen.

NBC 10 rents space from Radiate Media due to their core competency in traffic monitoring.

Gian-Paul, Ryan, Brett, and Jessica are being broadcast live to the NBC station headquarters! But are they really standing behind current traffic conditions?

Of course not. They’re behind a green screen at Radiate Media. (They legitimately were being broadcast directly to NBC, though; the green screen camera feed is on 24/7!)

Students talking with Mr. Rothey about M&T in general.

The Philly cheesesteak crew outside of Pat’s!

Delicious sashimi at Pod.

The Pod crew!

July 20th, 2012

Today marked the last day of case study quizzes! The students had one case study on Research in Motion and another on Rogers Communication. In the evening, students played tennis, met with other current M&T students, and went to bed early. They’ll need the sleep; we leave for Washington, D.C. tomorrow at 7:30am!

Hey everyone! Today was a day of academia and bowling. To keep things short, we listened to a lecture from marketing professor Dr. Fader. He also showed us a website he runs where you can input in a number, and the site tells you how “cool” the number is.

We performed a lab in SolidWorks, a mechanical engineering software that lets you create and print 3D designs. Students will get to take home their Plexiglass creations!

Finally, we all went bowling at night!

Tomorrow, we’re visiting Radiate Media, an M&T alumni’s company, doing a materials science lab, and going to West Philly / Center City for dinner. Enjoy your day, everyone!

What a long yet exciting today! We started our New York City trip with a 5am wakeup call. We were at Morgan Stanley’s NYC office by 8:30am.

The massive stock ticker and news board outside of the office.

At the Morgan Stanley office, we met with Mr. Michael Grimes, managing director of Morgan Stanley’s tech banking division. He explained the IPO process to students before running two interactive simulations of the Google IPO - one under a traditional structure and one under a Dutch auction structure. Everyone learned a lot about IPO pricing! Of course, there was time for photos after.

Everyone then had a few hours to explore the city. Some went to Central Park, others went to Koreatown, and others went to the 9/11 memorial. Here are some photos of everything!

The memorial fountain at the North Tower.

Students (and Max) stop for a photo at the 9/11 memorial.

Students hanging out in Central Park!

More Central Park goodness.

(Credit goes to Dante Zhang for a lot of the photos!)

Finally, we met back up at 2:45pm to visit DreamIt Ventures, a start-up accelerator based in Philadelphia, New York City, and Israel. The main difference between a venture capital firm and an accelerator is that a venture capital firm provides funding, whereas an accelerator provides mentorship.

Tomorrow, students are listening to a lecture by Pete Fader of Customer Centricity. They’re also going bowling in the evening! Have a good night, everyone.

Hey everyone! Today was a great academic day - we attended lectures on initial public offerings and on bioengineering, and we all met with Professor Babin and Sid to discuss final project ideas. The evening was dedicated to discussing a case study on TiVo and studying Arduino code for Wednesday’s big quiz.

We made sure that everybody went to bed early because we have a 5am wakeup for the bus to New York! We’re meeting with Michael Grimes, managing director at Morgan Stanley, and we’re also going to DreamIt Ventures. We’re then all walking around New York and having some general free time.

Hey everyone! Today was another one of those awesome days that only photos can describe. Regardless, to sum up what we did - we took the bus to the Liberty Bell, walked to Reading Terminal Market, walked to South Street, and walked to Rittenhouse Square. On South Street, most of us went to the Magic Gardens, a house converted into a ton of mosaics and pieces of art made of bottles.

Here are some awesome photos of the group!

Hey guys! It’s been an incredibly busy last few days, so here’s a picture-heavy three-day update. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled nightly update starting tomorrow - I promise! (:

July 12th, 2012

Today was a very cool day because everyone took a field trip to Neat, a start-up that helps you organize your life by scanning in paper documents and converting them to digital form. Also, each RTA took their team or teams to dinner, which was definitely a nice change from dining hall food!

Harris Romanoff, vice-president of Neat, showing how his product works.

The view from the 35th floor, which is where Neat’s office is!

Students pose in front of Neat’s logo.

Athens and Moscow, Max’s teams, join together for a dinner at Sang Kee, a Peking duck restaurant in Chinatown.

Xiaolei’s team, Beijing!

July 13th, 2012

Students spent most of today working on a business simulation involving model cars, then finishing up their Arduino labs in the afteroon and going to a camp-wide dance in the evening! Since Max was on his day off, here are some photos courtesy of Dante Zhang, M&TSI student.

July 14th, 2012

I’d say that today was the most fun day of M&TSI so far! We all took a trip to Ocean City, New Jersey, which is on the Jersey Shore. Besides getting to swim in the ocean, we all ate delicious food, went on rides, played arcade games, and generally just walked around and had fun!

A good portion of our M&TSI family getting ready to spend the day at the beach!

While some chose to spend most of their day in the water or on the sand…

…others (namely Brett and Nick) decided to hang out at the oxygen bar.

Saltwater taffy being made in front of us!

Students and RTAs enjoying a giant bucket of crab fries.

Tomorrow will prove to be another relaxing day! We’re taking a tour of Philadelphia from 11:30am to 4pm, and everyone will have ample time to destress, do homework, and study afterwards. I’m sure that everyone is looking forward to sleeping in.

My sincere apologies about missing a couple of days of posts - I hope everyone wasn’t kept in the dark for too long! Have a good day, everyone. (:

Max, embracing his day off, passed out at midnight and woke up at 3pm. He’s going to put it up retroactively after dinner!

Today was yet another day full of intense learning, a guest speaker, a really engaging engineering lab, and an awesome trip to Dave and Busters! To keep things short, there was a guest speaker from the Bressler Group, an industrial design firm that has worked closely with companies like Black & Decker. Professor Babin also covered three weeks of venture capital material in a one-hour lecture, and the students really seemed to respond well to it.

On the engineering side, students worked with the Boe-Bot, a two-wheeled vehicle that interfaces with the Arduino. They programmed their Boe-Bot to spin, stop, drive in different directions, and perform a “dance.” Afterwards, they learned how to read in from an analog source - in this case, a photoresistor that increased or decreased its resistance based on how much light was hitting the receptors - and incorporate that into code. What they ended up doing was configuring their Boe-Bot to drive toward a light source, stop in the absence of a light source, and reverse when put into extra darkness (if a student put their foot over the light sensors, for instance).

Aakash and Ryan hold their Boe-Bot to examine if its wheels are spinning as expected in response to the flashlight’s angle.

One Boe-Bot follows the other, which has a flashlight mounted on it, in a cha-cha line.

The highlight of the night was getting to take a two-hour break from studying and brainstorming to have fun at Dave & Busters! In this case, words cannot do the trip justice, so here are a few photos.

Michael hit the jackpot on this game! Here he is admiring his payout of 404 tickets.

RTAs and students alike pose with their 12-foot snakes.

Paulina, Olivia, and Gian-Paul show off their 80’s mustaches that they won at Dave & Busters.

Although we don’t have a whiteboard photo for tomorrow, here’s a more boring text-based schedule. ):

8-11:30am - field trip to Neat
11:30am-12:30pm - lunch
12:30-3pm - class
3pm-5:30pm - wireless data transmission lab
Evening - dinner in Center City with your M&TSI team and RTA leader!

Have a great night, everyone!

Today was a pretty intense day! Students had a lot of reading to prepare for class, and they did so admirably. In the morning, they engaged in a brainstorming exercise for potential start-up ideas involving either ball bearings or hair scrunchies. The purpose of this exercise was to get them to drop any preconceived notions of good or bad ideas and instead just focus on coming up with zany stuff. This is in the exact manner of one of the most successful design firms in the world, IDEO.

Another highlight was Dan Lee from Penn Robotics giving an extremely engaging lecture on the prevalence of robots in society and the incredible things they can do - flying in formation, playing soccer, and driving a car, for example. He also explained the challenges of coding a robot to respond to sensory input the way that humans do.

Ryan holds Jaime’s earlobes in order to distort the perceived direction that Dan Lee’s claps are coming from.

Today was the first day that students got to work in the lab. They wrote some basic computer code in order to program lights to blink in an alternating pattern. Some students even got to the extra credit portion, which was to create a light that turns off if you hold your hand over a photosensor!

Molly and Yujin with their photosensitive light bulb.

Kate and Jessica with their photosensitive light bulb, too!

On tomorrow’s agenda - more class, a case study on LinkedIn, a robot that follows a flashlight, and an evening field trip to Dave and Busters! Have a good night, everyone.