Paubox Scholarship 2024 Update
Aloha! My name is Dylan Dinio and I’m currently a third year at Northeastern University studying Computer Science and Game Design. This year has been a year full of new experiences and opportunities that I’m excited to be able to share with the Paubox community.
Starting my year, I spent my fall semester finishing my very first co-op at AutonodyneLLC. While there I was able to work on three different projects, one of which I served as one of the starting developers for, creating and designing UI for autonomous drone control. I was able to apply both my skills in UI design I’ve learned from my games courses and program as well as my technical background in computer science in a professional environment. I’m so appreciative to my team for the amazing experience and feel so lucky to have such a impactful first internship.
Soon after, I started applying to my next internship possibilities. I was able to receive some great advice from Taylor Ho during our annual Winter Networking scholarship who encouraged me in the direction I was taking in pushing myself as not just a Computer Scientist but a Designer as well. Throughout the application process I made sure to sell why my background in game design can be useful and provides a unique combination of design. HCI. and software skills. After many many applications and interviews, I was fortunate to receive offers for the summer internship programs at Google and Microsoft. After a lot of consideration I decided to join Google as a part of the YouTube Feed team helping to develop and optimize UI features for the YouTube web and mobile applications! I felt it was a perfect combination of HCI and software skills for a product that is used by billions of people and that I am particularly passionate about. I’m currently in the Bay Area working at the San Bruno office.
Aside from my internship experiences, I’ve also had a wonderful year in college with my extracurriculars. I developed a brand new modal for my software team at Sandbox for our project that launched in beta last year — GraduateNU. After this I made the decision to retire from the club to focus on my personal life, classes, and internship opportunities. I’m so proud to see that the app has now officially launched this year reaching 1.6k users.
I also was able to start a new Research Assistant position under Professor Alexandra To creating a plan to run a interview study of game developers to figure out how culture is involved in the game design process and hopefully from this learn if we can create a design pattern to create more culturally inclusive games. I’ve been able to grow my skills in research, documentation, and Human Computer Interaction. I’m very thankful to Professor To for mentoring me and allowing me to pursue this new opportunity in a field I have not explored deeply before.
I’ve also continued to participate in activities in Barkada, the Filipino club here at Northeastern. I participated in both our semesters dance showcases. I even choreographed a dance workshop toward the end of the year with a friend of mine. Spending time with my friends and pursuing my extra curricular activities has been a great break during the internship applications, classes, part time teaching job, and projects.
Going into my final year of classes I’m planning to continue working hard in everything I do but be sure to take the time to enjoy my last year of college leading up to my graduation. I will continue to pursue my research opportunities under Professor To and take this final year to explore specific topics in design and software that interest me such as VR or starting a production studio. Thank you so much to Hoala Greavy for providing me with this opportunity and thank you to all the Paubox Scholarship Team for their continual support throughout my STEM journey and allowing me to meet these wonderful people and mentors.