I’m Jessica, this year’s Associate Director (aka Vice President) for TechX, an MIT student organization that aims to empower students through technology. We put on multiple high-impact, high-energy events every year, ranging from hackathons to career fairs. Check out our website to learn more!

In total, TechX is composed of 9 committees: 5 external (HackMIT, xFair, MakeMIT, ProjX, THINK), and 4 internal (DevOps, Marketing, Finance, and Internal Relations). Each committee is headed by an amazing director, in charge of supporting and leading the team. Together, they make up TechX’s Exec team. Keep reading to get to know everyone a bit better!

Ramya Nagarajan

Managing Director

Hi friends!! I’m Ramya, a rising junior from the Bay Area majoring in 6–2(?) who is also returning for another year of TechX! (Get hype!!). I love running, finding new music, and hanging out with friends. Catch me in SF eating my weight in high quality Asian food this summer!

Jessica Zhu

Associate Director

Hey! It’s J ‘Ayy’ D, returning for yet another year filled with fun and exciting TechX events. I can’t wait to see all the amazing things we have in store come to life as we work together to create a huge impact on our community. Numbers-wise, I’m a 6–3, 2020, 5’2’’ human , and 95014 resident (bae ❤ area). Catch me playing tractor in my C5 suite or scurrying around campus with my yellow hydro. Stop me anytime and say hi!

Michael Silver

HackMIT Director

Hi I’m Michael, and I’m Co-Directing HackMIT 2018 with Jessica Sun! I’m a rising 6–3 Junior, and this summer I’ve been living in a hacker house and working on my own startup ideas. When I’m not working, I spend my time cooking, meeting with people, and exploring San Francisco. And of course, working with the team to make HackMIT 2018 the best it’s ever been!

Jessica Sun

HackMIT Director

Hi! I’m Jessica, and I’m co-directing HackMIT 2018 with Michael! I’m a rising 6–3 sophomore from St. Louis, Missouri (Go Cards!) who loves traveling, hiking, and baking birthday cakes. You can usually find me grabbing boba with friends or dancing to Young the Giant. I’m super excited for TechX this year and can’t wait to make more memories at MIT this fall!

Savannah En

xFair Director

Hello! My name is Savannah and I’m xFair Logs director! I’m a rising course 18 sophomore, Boston native, and I love playing around with my camera and reading new books (currently reading This Blinding Absence of Light). My summer will be spent exploring Jerusalem and consuming a very large quantity of hummus. Excited for xFair 2019 and year two at MIT!

Amy Kim

xFair Director

Hi everyone! I’m Amy, and I’m going to be the xFair Corporate Relations director this year! I’m going to be starting my sophomore year as a 6–14 major this fall, and I’m a proud Canadian (originally from Toronto). Catch me trying to pet as many dogs as possible this summer in SF, and getting ready to make xFair 2019 amazing!

Albert Yue

MakeMIT Director

Hi guys! I’m Albert, a rising sophomore from Massachusetts, studying math and CS, and am this year’s director of MakeMIT! In my free time, I enjoy playing video games, reading manga, playing poker, and trying to dance. This summer, catch me in Chicago eating lots of food and exploring the city. Super excited for another year of MakeMIT and TechX!

Rachel Groberman

ProjX Director

Hellooo. I’m Rachel and I’m director of ProjX this year! This summer you can catch me in LA augmenting realities and learning deeply at Disney. Outside of work, I love going on runs, listening to podcasts (if you need a recommendation….Gimlet Media is the best), and building random tech projects with friends. Super hype for another year with TechX and another year of supporting the amazing side projects of MIT students :D

Ethan Weber

SpecialX Director

Hey everyone, I’m Ethan! I’m from rural Wisconsin and a rising junior studying course 6–2. I love the outdoors, spontaneous activities, and most of all side projects. As someone who loves robotics, I’m spending my summer working on autonomous quadcopters in the Bay Area. I’m excited to contribute to TechX and the MIT community as SpecialX director.

Allan Garcia-Zych

THINK Director

Hi, I’m Allan, a rising sophomore from sunny San Diego double majoring in 6–2 and 8, and I’ll be directing THINK next year. Since you asked, I enjoy playing tennis poorly, watching documentaries, and traveling wherever and whenever I can. I’m excited to work with everyone in techx this upcoming year, especially those outside of my committee.

Anton Cao

DevOps Director

Hallo! My name is Anton, I’m a rising sophomore from the Bay Area majoring in 6–3, and I’ll be DevOps head this year for TechX! I’m incredibly excited to be working with all the other talented devs on the team to make our events this year run as smoothly as possible. Outside of CS, I also enjoy binge reading Naruto, watching psychological thrillers like Silence of the Lambs, and trying to dance.

Su Yang

Marketing Director

Hey, I’m Su! I’m a rising 6–3 junior directing the marketing committee, and I can’t wait to see all the different creative directions our events will go in this year. I love geometric designs, carbs, and color palettes, and Kombucha; find me in Seattle this summer eating seafood, pretending to enjoy coffee, and attempting to hike.

Ria Das

Finance Director

Hey! I’m Ria and I’m Finance Director a.k.a. finhead 🦈! I’m a rising sophomore originally from New Hampshire majoring in Course 18/6–3. I enjoy running/walking by the river, playing with my and all nearby dogs, and generally trying new things (highlights of ‘17-’18: ice hockey and escargot). This summer I’m enjoying Boston and Cambridge minus the ~psets~ and have found myself growing quite fond of Beantown. Excited for another year of TechX and MIT!

Neena Dugar

Internal Relations Director

Hello! My name is Neena and I’m a rising senior at MIT majoring in 6–2 and minoring in Literature. I’m from the UK and I love tea, origami, food (both cooking and eating), plants, and friends! I’m spending the summer in San Francisco, where I’m enjoying the good weather and time to explore. Looking forward to a great year for TechX!

Thanks for sticking through it all! Our team is beyond excited for what we can accomplish together with all of our amazing committees. But first, we can’t wait to get to know all of you a little bit better this upcoming school year! If you’re new to MIT (or us), make sure to stop by our booth at the Activities Midway — we’ll have plenty of free swag, free food, and good company :)

PS Check out last year’s Exec team here!

#Team TechX was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

DevOps fits into this picture by writing some software which helps all of these committees function; let’s take a look into the magic that goes on behind the scenes.

What is DevOps?

DevOps (short for “Developer Operations”) is the software development team that helps streamline TechX’s workflow. We love building things — when we’re not tooling away at problem sets, we’re probably working on various projects — TechX related or not.

We foster a culture of collaborative learning by holding Get Stuff Done nights (GSDs), where we order food and hack together. Members love these nights: it helps the less experienced learn from those with more experience and builds community.

Previous & Current Projects

Over the years, DevOps has made various projects (you can see the ones we’ve open-sourced here).

Quill

Registration, for hackers!

Developed by Edwin Zhang and open-sourced by Jessy Lin, Quill makes hackathon registration clean and streamlined. Organizers can manage registration and confirmation information, view registration statistics, and even integrate with Slack bots and other tools via an API.

Gavel

A few years ago, Anish Athalye realized that judging at most hackathons is broken.

Take the example of absolute scoring: let’s say one project will be rated a seven out of ten, and the other project will be rated an eight out of ten. Even with a rubric, the difference in assigning these scores may be quite arbitrary. Instead, Anish used a mathematically sound model based on the Crowd-BT algorithm, which uses pairwise comparisons.

Today, Gavel is used by quite a few hackathons, including HackPrinceton, WildHacks, HackTX, Hack In The North, HAkron, and HackBeanpot.

FAQBot

HackMIT gets a lot of emails, many of which may be answered by our FAQ. To help us answer these messages in a timely manner, Shreyas Kapur wrote a bot integrated with our Gmail to automate responses to select emails. With these templates, we can better serve hacker needs, as well as reduce our time spent on email.

GalleXy

One branch of TechX, ProjX, provides funding for MIT student projects every semester, and Angel Alvarez is working on an online platform for sharing such student projects. This platform, called GalleXy, is useful for finding data on past student projects, as well as tracking progress for the hundreds of student projects that TechX supports every year.

Cog

Cog provides a centralized interface for loaning out hardware, which will be used at HackMIT 2017 and MakeMIT 2018. It makes it easy for organizers to manage hardware inventory and track which hackers have what, and it allow hackers to quickly find the hardware they want for their hack. Cog is a work in progress that is expected to be open-sourced in early October.

Interested in more?

We’re always looking to build our next project: if you’re excited by building software to support teams, drop us a line at techx-devops@mit.edu! We’re happy to help.

If you’re a current or incoming MIT student (interested in DevOps or otherwise), keep an eye out for us at the Activities Midway! We’re always looking for new students to join.

A special thanks to TechX Exec, Anish, Shreyas, Claire, and various HackMIT members for giving feedback on this post.

DevOps at TechX was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

TechX members work really hard year round to run several annual large scale events (check out our website), but they also do an incredible job of innovating on these events each year. A big part of this is marketing!

The TechX Marketing Team is the creative direction behind TechX. We design and deploy all forms of branding and advertising, from swag and posters to event themes and websites.

It is an amazing and talented community that continually inspires me with their dedication, creativity, and growth. They work with their event committees and together to create really cool things — so I want to share some of what Marketing has done this past year!

Each year, HackMIT posts a count down on their Facebook page leading up to registration day! This year the theme for HackMIT is “Hack to the Future.”

Edit: The count down GIFs included: the HackMIT H vine swinging in a prehistoric jungle; the A in a hot air balloon over the pyramids; the C training diligently as a ninja in Ancient Japan; the K on a rocket to the moon; and the whole group coming together at MIT (featured above)!

The xFair paper airplane has been an essential part of the xFair aesthetic since the first time the Marketing Team incorporated the design into their branding. It has been even featured as a hack in the Student Center to hype the event!

Having a branding staple doesn’t mean there is no room for creativity and change, though. This past year, the xFair branding used a cool gradient colour scheme to incorporate the paper airplane aesthetic in new ways. Check out their website for more!

This past spring was extremely exciting because ProjX held its very first stand alone event: ProjXpo! It was an expo for the amazing student projects ProjX had funded that semester.

The Marketing Team worked from the ground up to design and create all the different marketing aspects of the event. Since the event was held during the last week before finals, we choose for a party theme! There were glow sticks, LED light up balloons, music, and of course the amazing ProjX projects. Click here to see photos of the event!

Blueprint 2017 is Here!

For Blueprint, the Marketing Team had loads of fun creating a blueprint and sketch book inspired website and brand!

The website background is made of blue triangular graph paper (also called 3D graph paper), which is often used by architects for creating isometric or pseudo-three-dimensional sketches. Its style is mirrored in the new three dimensional logo and other website assets. Best of all: check out the drawing feature built into the website! (Don’t forget to send us your masterpieces with the little paper airplane in the top left corner!)

Joining TechX Marketing has been one of the best decisions I’ve made at MIT, and I’m so excited for the next school year! I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into the work Marketing does. See you in the fall!

TechX Marketing was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a rising Junior at MIT, and for the past two years I’ve been part of one of the most awesome clubs on campus, TechX!

What is TechX? We’re an MIT student group that puts on fantastic, fun, and far reaching events — from hackathons to career fairs to project funding to high school programs. Our goal is to empower students through technology. If you want to learn more, check us out here.

Needless to say, putting on these events takes a lot of manpower. Along with our 5 major event committees (HackMIT, xFair, MakeMIT, ProjX, THINK), we also have teams for Marketing, DevOps, Finance, IR, and more. Behind each of these amazing teams is an amazing director — so let’s meet this year’s TechX Exec team!

Anna Sappington

Managing Director

My favorite way to get to know someone is meeting for coffee. This summer, I’m in the process of eating my weight in sushi in Kyoto, Japan (and doing a bit of research, too). I’m looking forward to my junior year at MIT and the upcoming season of TechX events!

Abhinav Venigalla

Associate Director

Junior, studying 6–2. When I’m not babbling on about signal processing, I love watching old Westerns, playing frisbee, or running alongside the river. Currently spending the summer at Cruise working on self-driving cars, but looking forward to the fall and another full year of TechX :)

Claire Nord

HackMIT Director

Hi, I’m Claire, and I’m co-directing HackMIT 2017 with Michael! I’m a rising 6-3 junior, and this summer I’m interning at the Microsoft Garage. It’s been super fun living with three roommates in TechX and exploring Boston now that I have more free time. I’m looking forward to road-tripping to Hackcon with five other Hack and Make members later this summer.

Michael Silver

HackMIT Director

Hi I’m Michael, and I’m Co-Directing HackMIT 2017 with Claire! I’m a rising 6-3 Sophomore, and this summer I’ve been interning at Apple, working on Siri. It’s been a blast walking and eating in the amazing city that is San Francisco. I can’t wait to see what the team’s hard work this summer leads to at HackMIT this September!

Rahul Ramakrishnan

MakeMIT Director

Hello everyone! My name is Rahul, and I am the Director of MakeMIT 2018. I am a member of the rare species on campus known as Course 3, and outside the classroom I enjoy traveling, hiking, and bassing a cappella. There are few things I like more than TechX and Kanye, and you’re always welcome to come say hi to me in Baker this upcoming year!

Madee Haworth

ProjX Director

Hi! I’m Madee, and I’m the ProjX director this year. I’m a rising junior in course 2A-6 (meche and robotics) and I’m spending the summer in San Diego as a systems engineering intern at Northrop Grumman! I’m crazy about cheese and I love swimming, free food, and pseudo-artsy pictures.

Allen Lee

xFair Director

Hi guys! I’m Allen, one of the co-directors for xFair, and a rising sophomore at MIT. I like to play tennis, travel (going to Bali today actually), and watch videos of food! The Tasty/BuzzFeed ‘Worth It’ videos are my favorite right now. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

Jessica Zhu

xFair Director

Hey, nice to meet you! Some basic things about me — I’m course 6–3, I live in BC (C5!), I’m from California, I consume much watermelon. I also love pjs, yellow, and yellow pjs. When I was younger, I once wanted to be like Violet from Willy Wonka and stuck a piece of chewed gum behind my ear. Thankfully my hair has since grown back.

Sooraj Boominathan

THINK Director

I’m Sooraj Boominathan, a junior studying Computer Science/Engineering (Course 6–3) at MIT! I’m originally from Oklahoma, which is undoubtedly the most exciting state in the US. In my spare time, I enjoy playing pool, browsing Quora, and watching NBA (go Thunder!).

Ramya Nagarajan

THINK Director

I’m Ramya, a rising sophomore studying EECS (6–2) and Sooraj’s co-director for THINK! I love running and hiking, bombarding people with snapchats of dogs, and just hanging out/talking to people! I’m super excited for TechX this year! Say hi if you see me in BC (or around campus/SF!)

Stef Ren

Internal Relations Director

Hi! I’m Stef, and I’m a junior at MIT. I’m currently enjoying the summer living in San Francisco and eating good food at Dropbox! I love meeting new people and I’m looking forward to this year at MIT :)

Rebca van de Ven

Marketing Director

I’m a rising junior double majoring in mathematics and philosophy. I love art, baking and giving back to communities. I am from the Netherlands, but grew up across the world and have visited over 40 different countries. My favourite thing about travelling is getting to experience new places and cultures, and my least favourite is missing people I love.

Vahid Fazel-Rezai

SpecialX Director

Hi! I’m a Canadian senior from North Dakota on the SpecialX committee. I likes playing pool, biking, sailing, and TechX!

Moin Nadeem

DevOps Director

Hey guys, my name is Moin! I direct DevOps, an amazing team of hackers whom we are all incredibly proud of. I’m studying Computer Science and spending this summer working at QuickBase, a no-code DB. In my free time, I love to work on side projects and hang out with friends. I’m incredibly excited to meet all the 2021s and enjoy the adventures that sophomore year has to offer :D

Sarah Powazek

Finance Director

Hi, I’m Sarah Powazek, and I’m the TechX Financial Director. I’m studying Political Science and Computer Science at MIT, and this summer, I’m working on civic tech in Boston City Hall. In my free time I like to play guitar, read manga, and travel as much as I can. I’m excited to welcome all the 2021’s soon!

And that’s the Exec team! For those of you at MIT (or joining us this fall), come meet us during Activities Midway — we’d love to say hi, share some swag and snacks, and introduce you to our awesome committees.

Meet the Team was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many people are going to tell you that the journey matters more than the destination, and that was true of our bus ride up… if you count sharing our best sleeping faces and neck breaking postures. I closed my eyes to a sleeping Cambridge with the sun just peeking over the Charles River and opened them again to a tame lake under a brightly lit sky and two gorgeous lake houses holding our committee directors hiding in various nooks and crannies.

In the thought process of our fearless TechX directors, the best way for everyone to acquaint themselves with the houses was to go searching high and low for them inside the house. From underneath a pile of covers sprouted a THINK director and from behind window curtains produced an xFair director, and on it went until all directors were accounted for.

With all members’ bellies filled with breakfast, TechX broke into small groups to battle for coveted points by completing cleverly worded challenges (GO WET POPTARTS! Later renamed soggy poptarts). 20 minutes into this game, I witnessed Jack Serrino’s insane jumping capabilities, pulled off a magic trick, and chanted “GO WET POPTARTS” more times than I ever thought I would. The end of our first group challenge signaled the time for nothing other than…TECHX SWAG! Swiggity swag newly designed TechX shirts were in the bag! I was now properly outfitted for a TechX family photo worthy of a spot atop the fireplace (or the TechX office in our case… or just Google Drive), we all gathered outside in 30 degree weather sporting our t-shirts and took a family photo like no other:

With family vibes floating throughout the house, we dispersed to the lake where paddle boats were taken out to explore neighboring islands and I began a volleyball game in which the ball almost floated to oblivion that was the lake just like our worries as the rustle of fall trees and screams to keep the ball up filled the chilly Maine air. Little did we know what would hit us shortly after lunch: A scavenger hunt selfie competition *dun dun dunnnn*

Grouped with new members, I was ready to take some group challenge selfies and photobomb other group selfies to my utmost. We started strong by becoming professional interpretive dancers for a group video, got married in a hastily improvised wedding procession, toilet paper mummified my lucky teammate, and finally got off the crazy train with a dance battle with another group. I limboed over a metal pole and became my spirit animal with a new group of people, creating memories that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon (the selfies will carry on if ever I do forget.) Suffice to say, this scavenger hunt showed the passion and ambition that all members held, many groups going above and beyond to complete all 2 pages of challenges and trekking miles to do so to boot!

Cue a brief intermission in which we all came back to the house and collapsed for a few hours of much needed rest… or a few games of pool played with cue sticks and even our hands (changing it up a little!). As the night set in outside, I was recharged and ready to help plan a committee skit to poke fun at our directors and win the skit challenge for the THINK committee, because “we did it for the college apps!” From an episode of Shark Tank, Kanye’s hopeful dream to join MakeMIT, and THINK’s skit envisioning just how far public figures would go for college apps, I was left in tears of laughter and completely floored by the hilariously creative skits created from just a topic sentence and 30 minutes of planning. But alas, only one committee can triumph in the skit challenge, and as a proud member of the THINK committee, I would say we killed our skit performance and won a head start in the race to our second lake house, where dinner awaited.

With a jampacked day, I should be hitting a food coma right about now, right? Wrong. After our directors imparted wise advice to baby TechX members, we were free for the night, and that naturally ended up with a bonfire, ramen party, hot tub adventure, and guitar/ukulele singalong all happening at once. The house was a bright light in the darkness of the night that burned into the wee hours of the morning, moving us closer to the end of an amazing retreat.

As Sunday rolled around, I enjoyed the lake’s view one last time and departed a house filled with new memories on my way back to Cambridge and the bustling lives we temporarily paused for a memorable weekend. I leave you here with hopes that you lived some of the most striking experiences of my first retreat and an adorable photo of TechX dabbing!

A Look Into TechX’s 2016 Retreat! was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Margaret Tian, Managing Director, Class of 2018 (Me!)

I wish I had a grand story about joining TechX, but I don’t. In fact, I joined completely on a whim. As a freshman, I had no idea what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I liked planning things, so hey, xFair logistics seemed pretty cool. Looking back, I can safely say that joining TechX has been one of my best decisions. That may sound incredibly cheesy, but I have learned more about handling responsibility, facing the unexpected with composure, working with others, and gaining a team’s respect than I could have imagined. I’ve made both incredible friends and memories. I know that the skills I’ve learned and the people I’ve met will stay with me through my lifetime.

Annie Zhang, Marketing Director, Class of 2019:

My favorite middle school teacher told me once, “Find the things that change, move, and matter — be a part of them.” I largely forgot about this piece of advice until I got to MIT.

TechX was the first club I joined here. To be completely honest, I didn’t really know what TechX was when I applied. However, I did know that everyone I talked to about it was really excited and deeply passionate about. I immediately had a hunch that this student group “empowering students through technology” was one of the things that matter, and I was determined to find a way to be a part of it. I applied very last minute (because who is actually good at time management) and had an interview the next day. I have no idea how I got in, but I ended up spending an incredible year with the xFair Logistics team and the Marketing team.

I was so surprised that as a freshman, I was pretty much allowed to take the lead on xFair branding and make big decisions about what the event should look like. I was even the lead on designing and making the xFair paper airplane hack in the student center. I never expected to have so much autonomy and to be able to take leadership roles as a freshmen. When the day of xFair finally came, I realized that all the work we had done through the year actually had such a huge impact on all the companies and students who went to xFair. One year ago, I would have doubted you if you said that a freshman could help organize a completely student-run career fair and tech expo, but now I realize that TechX members are not running events at this scale several times a year, but they’re also doing an incredible job of innovating on these events each year.

Looking back, I can definitely say that TechX is one of those things that “change, move, and matter” especially to the student body at MIT. I’m so lucky that I had the opportunity to be a part of it, and I’m really looking forward to what the new year brings for TechX and MIT!

Anna Sappington, xFair Logistics Director, Class of 2019:

Anyone who has come to MIT as a freshman will agree: Activities Midway is complete sensory overload. The event, which occurs before the start of fall classes, brings together the hundreds of diverse student groups on campus in one room. Last fall, I visited perhaps 30 booths and left with bags filled with free swag. Amongst the madness, the TechX booth stood out from all the rest; you could just tell how genuinely excited the students there were about improving campus life for their peers through tech events. Never in a million years did I imagine I’d get in, but low and behold after a Friday night info session and an application polished and submitted 4 hours later, I had myself an interview for the xFair Logistics committee and then became a member. TechX has really become such a hard-working and supportive family during my time here at MIT. I just can’t imagine MIT without these crazy, passionate, and inspirational coworkers I call my friends.

Kimberli Zhong, HackMIT Director, Class of 2018:

I did a lot of robotics in high school, and I thought I was pretty techy when I came to MIT. One of my life hacks was using an NFC, or near-field communication, ring to unlock my phone (similar to the technology in the ID card you tap). During my CPW, an upperclassman saw my hand with the obviously ugly ring on it and asked me what it was. I explained it, and he immediately told me, “You should totally join TechX.”

I dragged my CPW friends to info sessions that weekend and saw how awesome and enthusiastic TechX members were. They told me about all the cool stuff they did on campus, talked about the impact of their events, gave me useful life advice — and I was sold. I’m so glad Jennifer and Katie (past HackMIT directors) saw something in me and decided to take a chance on me. It’s cheesy, but TechX has really defined my time at MIT so far. I’ve met and worked with so many amazing people because of that fateful turn of events.

— — —

Whatever our reasons were for joining TechX, we’ve all had great experiences. If you’re a MIT student looking to learn new skills and bring some high impact events to campus, please apply at techx.mit.edu!

Why did we join TechX? was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dorm row is again busier than ever as all the students trickle in from all corners of the world, and with them they’re bringing their unforgettable summer stories. We wanted to share a few of these stories about what our TechX members have been up to these past few months! From interning at awesome tech companies around the world, to doing research with MIT professors, to traveling the world, to picking up new hobbies, TechX has had a wild summer! Keep reading to find out where in the world TechX was this summer!

Hi! I’m Margaret, a junior in course 18C and I’m this year’s TechX Managing Director. This summer I interned as a software engineering intern at Fitbit in San Francisco! I worked on creating an automatic mean shift detection system to monitor system metrics in production (keep an eye out for my blog post on eng.fitbit.com, the Fitbit engineering site!). I also started running, and somehow managed to complete the SF 5k (ignore how gross and sweaty I look). I hiked a lot (with some TechX alums who were also in the Bay Area), drank a lot of Plentea, and ate delicious chinatown spicy food.

Hi, I’m Claire, a sophomore in course 6–3 and on the HackMIT committee! This summer I did research in Japan through MISTI, while also grappling with HackMIT logistics directorship from 13 to 16 time zones away (depending on your US coast). I’ve photoblogged my travels at clairenord.me, my new website (made this summer :)). The highlight of my summer might be biking the Shimanami Kaido (ocean road) in between two of Japan’s main islands, or it might be our twice-to-thrice-weekly HackMIT video meetings (158 GB of cellular data and counting — thanks MISTI ;o).

Hi! I’m John Peurifoy and I’m on the MakeMIT committee! This summer I built a kitchen from scratch, went backpacking for two weeks in Central America, and worked on constructing novel architectures for recurrent neural networks with Max Tegmark’s group. I met people that were a helluva smarter than I, got pick-pocketed in a Costa Rican bar and almost in a casino (I learned a thing or two the second time), and started learning American Jiu Jitsu. I saw some beautiful places, but don’t take my word for it:

I’m Jenny Xu, I’m a 6–3 sophomore and I’m on HackMIT. This summer I was interning as a Software Engineering Intern at Sony PlayStation in San Francisco. I worked on the PlayStation 4, and I was able to create new features for it that will go live in September! This summer I also went to Europe and got to eat Russian food for the first time!

My name is Caitlin, and I’m part of HackMIT in addition to being a junior in course 6 this year. This summer I interned at Google in Cambridge, and the best part was that felt like I was back home at MIT: every single person I met there was welcoming and curious about the world. Within a five minute conversation, you could tell they were passionate about something and were pursuing it, yet that something was different for every person. Finding a place just like MIT but not MIT was so surreal and feeling immediately at home was probably one of the best experiences of my summer.

I’m Tina Quach, a junior majoring in computer science. I joined TechX, specifically the MakeMIT committee, my freshman year because I wanted to join a group of amazing people who are passionate about technology and innovation. I stayed on the team for round 2 my sophomore year. Serving on the organizing committee of MakeMIT, the hardware hackathon, was extremely rewarding. This summer, I interned at Google in Mountain View where I collaborated with a teammate to build a web-based developer tool for Blockly, a library for visual, block-based programming editors. Critical to building a great tool was knowing what it’s like to be a Blockly Developer. This I learned by creating a “low floor, high ceiling” platform for kids to create “choose your own adventure” stories.

I’m Vahid, a junior majoring in computer science and math, and I’m on the ProjX committee. I had an absolute blast this summer adventuring in the SF bay area! I was lucky enough to be with friends who love exploring and ended up going on a bunch of fun excursions. Highlights were flying a plane from San Francisco airspace to San Jose airspace, riding horses through a forest in Yosemite, paddle boarding the ocean in Santa Cruz, and running half a marathon across the Golden Gate and back (note that I wore a ProjX shirt specifically for the picture in this post). I can officially say I finished the race faster than Mark Zuckerberg! Mid-summer I got a chance to go on vacation with my family in Puerto Rico and catch up after a long while. Throughout I was also working at Google, writing code and meeting a ton of other interns. Overall, I’m grateful for an enjoyable summer and excited to be back on campus! P.S. I went to see Hasan Minhaj perform his show my last night in the bay and it was amazing. He’s coming to Boston November 13 — I’m going again and would recommend; check him out!

My name is Marianne Olsen, and I’m a 2019 Course 2 (Mechanical Engineering). I’m TechX’s Finance & Internal Relations Director which means it’s my job to make sure each of our committees has money so we can run all of our events and initiatives as well as encourage TechX inter-committee bonding.

In short, I spent most of my summer in airports:

After a few weeks at home in Houston and relaxing by the beach in San Diego with my family, I returned here to MIT to be a residential electrical engineering tutor for the Women’s Technology Program, so I got to meet a lot of fantastic women, enjoy the view of 4th of July fireworks from the McCormick penthouse, and play around with Arduino projects. Being on campus was extremely convenient for TechX purposes because it allowed me to run finance errands for HackMIT :) Later, I spent a few weeks visiting my family in Norway, which was lovely and cold, and relaxing enough that I was able to handle lots of paperwork and emails for TechX’s committees and plan for my dorm’s REX (Residence Exploration) events. After a week at home I’m back on campus to run MacGregor House’s REX events!

Hey there — I’m Kevin Shum, Course 6–3/Computer Science, Class of 2019. This summer, I interned at Ori Systems, a MIT-founded startup and Media Lab spin-off based in South Boston. They’re focused on building dynamic, morphable IoT-connected furniture for small spaces, and my summer project was to build their mobile apps. I absolutely loved working alongside a small team of MIT grads in a startup environment. Development moved rapidly, and no two days were alike. I had full ownership of my project and learned a ton about IoT devices and iOS and Android dev, both frontend and backend. I was on xFair Logistics this past year, but I’ll be joining xFair Corporate Relations this fall. I’m really excited to be a part of xFair again!

While this summer has been incredible, we’re so glad to be home again. The HackMIT packages are rolling in hot and we’re already getting hyped to host thousands of hackers next week! Stay tuned to read all about how we’re kicking off another school year with HackMIT 2016 :)

Where in the world was TechX this summer? was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey! I’m Vahid, writing on behalf of ProjX. We’re a committee within TechX all about supporting MIT students’ side projects. Turns out MIT students make some pretty awesome stuff in their free time! A few times a year, we take applications and select a batch of projects to fund, up to $500 each. We have about 70 projects a year, in the past ranging from an Oculus-controlled quadcopter to a Bitcoin store checkout system. Besides funding projects, we promote the broader MIT maker community in three ways: showcase events, technical workshops, and an online project gallery.

ProjX was originally conceived as an idea to showcase students at xFair, the campus-wide annual career fair and tech expo. Called “xFair Student Relations” for several years, the program allowed students to demo their side projects and technology at booths alongside companies. Over time, we gave student exhibitors more support in the form of funding for project materials and monthly progress check-ins.

Last year, we rebranded with the ProjX name, growing and re-scoping beyond side project demos at xFair. Our mission is now to encourage and enable students to pursue side projects, spurring creative excursions outside the classroom and hands-on technical experience. The idea is that one batch of demos will inspire more students to begin their own projects and go on to demo them, perpetuating the cycle.

To give a sense of the kinds of projects in ProjX, we asked the teams that we funded over the past year to write about their work. Read on to see what they a few of them said!

Ornithopter (by Alyanna Villapando)

The project I worked on this summer was trying to create a small, Wi-Fi enabled ornithopter with the Intel Edison. An ornithopter, unlike more common aircraft like airplanes or quadcopters, uses flapping to generate lift and thrust, much like a bird would. There were plenty of obstacles when it came to brainstorming possible designs, writing code, and finally building this model, but in the end I managed to create a rudimentary prototype that features a live-streaming camera, several moving appendages, and a flapping mechanism which I could build upon in the future. More details about the prototype can be found on my website. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity ProjX gave me to pursue this idea. Thanks to them, I learned a lot about design and rapid prototyping while ending up with a tangible product.

Montagger: Graffiti Field Recorder (by Jonathan Bobrow)

Montagger is an Open Source device and software application to provide graffiti artists with an archiving method. Additionally, capturing the motion data from a performance of an artist gives her/him the ability to later use that data and extend the performance. As the past few years have seen major destruction of large scale graffiti art (5Pointz, MTA), I wanted to give artists a tool to record their work could be both historically important as well as creatively empowering. My work with Shantell Martin, had a strong influence on thinking about how an artist defines and is defined by her line. More info here.

Project Argus: Augmented/Enhanced Reality Platform (by Mina Fahmi and James Li)

Tools are platforms upon which biological limitations may be overcome. For our ProjX, we proposed Project Argus, a headset which can provide an individual with enhanced and augmented vision. Two similar systems were designed for unique use cases. Argus Heavy is a full-head helmet which provides night vision, zoom, wide range, and macro modes. An augmented reality platform will be integrated to provide sensor information and allow for further applications to be developed. Argus Lite also served as an augmented reality platform while providing night vision and zoom to one eye in a more mobile package, allowing normal functionality for the other eye. To develop these systems, we integrated rotating optics, infrared LEDs and Raspberry Pi into a headset form factor. The final design was 3D printed and ran on a Python script in Raspian.

Luminescence (by Garrett Parrish)

The Luminescence project is an exploration into a new type of illumination technique and control system. Currently, in architectural, themed, and entertainment contexts, lighting systems are typically designed with a line-of-sight paradigm where a light source is directed at a backdrop. This project sought to explore an alternative lighting concept that would create an organic and bioluminescent look and feel. To demonstrate this new look, a 24-square-foot floor panel that both illuminates and senses feet was designed and constructed. Additionally, a new custom control system was designed that allowed for the mapping of any visual image, video, or animation onto the complex lighting array and for the programming of interactions between multiple guests within the walking area. As guests walk over the panel, the floor will illuminate beneath them and organically animate connections between them. The project has been fully prototyped and is currently undergoing production designs for integration into the MIT Museum.

Luminescence was imagined, designed, and built by Garrett Parrish. www.garrettparrish.com

As a committee, we’re always super excited to see the impressive ideas and fascinating creations of the teams. Although we wish we could accept every project, we are limited by budget and can only choose so many to fund. In the fall of 2015, we had 119 applications and selected 54 projects, and over the past summer we were only able to accept 12 of 46 applications.

When considering applications, our committee members independently review the proposals, giving multiple reads to each application, and assign a score across various categories. After this process we regroup, recalibrate, and select the final funded projects. We see ProjX as a tremendous opportunity to foster student education and novel ideas, so the selection criteria (as posted on our website) that we use are:

• Novelty and creativity
• Educational value
• Impact of ProjX support
• Expectation of successful completion
• Overall cost

Even though we are limited in funds, we are working on other ways of promoting student projects. One channel, of course, is hosting project demos to increase their visibility. Last spring we piloted our first annual ProjX Demo Day, where we open up the event to projects beyond those that we funded. We also have an online project gallery in the works, where we make the showcase experience virtual and timeless. Beyond visibility, we are considering more ways to enrich the maker community, including workshops and talks throughout the year — keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates. We’re looking forward to these new opportunities!

If you have any suggestions for ProjX or are interested in contributing, email us at projx@mit.edu!

ProjX Projects was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey everyone! My name is Kavish, and I’m a sophomore here at MIT and director of the MIT-THINK Scholars Program, a high school research program that’s a part of TechX. THINK stands for Technology for Humanity guided by Innovation, Networking, and Knowledge, and our guiding philosophy is that high school students, although inexperienced, still have the creativity and curiosity to do meaningful work in science and technology.

In particular, we look for students who have not had previous access to opportunities in science, especially those with ideas that are home-grown and self-conceived. The program was started in 2008, and has been funding and mentoring student projects on topics from disease resistance in pea plants to smart windows for home energy optimization to a novel electrolyte for improving the efficiency of carbon dioxide reduction. It also brings the finalists to MIT to attend TechX’s annual xFair, a 120+ company career fair and tech expo, tour MIT labs, and meet with MIT professors in their project’s area.

This program has been successful in many ways, and we will continue to have it for the foreseeable future — I encourage anyone who is interested in helping this program grow and continue to thrive to apply to the THINK committee this coming fall.

However, despite our best efforts and though our projects are often home-grown and done without the help of a lab, most of our applicants still come from magnet schools, many of which already give their students a number of opportunities in science and a strong science education. We really want to target those students who are not getting these opportunities as well: students, like us, who love science and tinkering and have a passionate curiosity about the world, but who have not had any opportunity to realize this passion because of lack of opportunity.

To this end, we’re launching a new program, Out of the Box, which is targeted at low-income students in the Boston area. The program will function similarly to THINK in many ways, except will not require as much from the students at the outset.

In particular, we will have the students come up with only the bare bones of what they want to work on, and then our mentors will work with those accepted to develop the project idea to a workable state by teaching them about the topics surrounding the project and guiding them through the writing of a technical proposal. We will then choose as many of these students as possible to receive funding to pursue their projects under our mentorship in the spring and an additional educational scholarship for their pursuit of science in the future. We really want to bring the joy of science to these kids through them creating their own projects in whatever field they want, and us helping them carry it out.

Applications for Out of the Box will be opening sometime early in this coming fall. Thanks for reading and look out for more news from Out of the Box as mentorships get rolling and high school students start producing science! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at gandhik@mit.edu or the team at think@mit.edu.

THINK: Out of the Box was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey, I’m Jack — an MIT 2018. Welcome to the TechX blog! My friends and I have decided to start blogging every couple of weeks to document how TechX has shaped our college experience. We want this blog to be a place for our opinions, events, and stories.

What is TechX? TechX is a MIT student group that I’ve been a part of for 2 years. We put on fantastic, fun, and far reaching events — from hackathons to career fairs to project funding programs. If you want to learn more, you can visit http://techx.mit.edu

You can expect to see a post here once a month or so that’ll touch on the following topics:

• Behind the scenes of our events
• Insights and reflections
• Life at MIT
• And more!

Meet the Team

As a kick-off post, meet this year’s Exec team! These people are some of my best friends — they’re really cool, I promise.

Margaret Tian

Managing Director, 2018 studying Mathematics

I used to have 3 dreams. Now that Pokemon Go has let me live out one of them, I guess I only have 2: being able to do a pull-up and working in a Sephora.

Andreea Martin

Associate Director, 2018 studying Electrical Engineering

I love trying all the foods, making music, interior designing, soldering tiny things, and lighting up my world in LEDs.

Kimberli Zhong

HackMIT Director, 2018 studying Computer Science

My favorite things are cute puppies, smoothies, and digging my toes in the sand at the beach. And cool tech stuff.

Stef Ren

HackMIT Director, 2019 studying Computer Science

I like to spend most of my time reading, eating, and sleeping. I also enjoy trying new activities, learning new things, and meeting people :)

Abhinav Venigalla

MakeMIT Director, 2019 studying Computer Science & Electrical Engineering

Give me a long enough lever and a place to put it, and I’ll probably end up breaking something in the TechX office. I’m into Ultimate Frisbee, guitar, physics, and coffee. I sometimes bring oscilloscopes to parties.

Vahid Fazel-Rezai

ProjX Director, 2018 studying Computer Science and Math

I am a country boy who likes hiking and biking. I play pool in my free time.

Claudia Wu

xFair Director, 2019 studying Computer Science

My favorite color is green. I love to read and I’m an unexpected reality show addict. You can often find me either watching food videos or snacking.

Anna Sappington

xFair Director, 2019 studying Computer Science and Biology

I like alternative music, husky dogs, sushi, genomes, and coffee. Oh also coffee. Did I mention I like coffee?

Anthony Liu

DevOps Director, 2019 studying Computer Science

I’m an easily-excited four year old that enjoys EDM, piano, EDM on piano, and films that make my head explode. Lowkey scared of caffeine (@anna).

Kavish Gandhi

THINK Director, 2019 studying Mathematics

I am a math addict who likes reading, classic rock, and excessively spicy food.

Marianne Olsen

Finance/Internal Relations Director, 2019 studying Mechanical Engineering

I like emails, the color blue, robots, bodies of water, and books. I’m also fond of sugar in any form, especially lemonade and chocolate.

Annie Zhang

Marketing Director, 2019 studying Mechanical Engineering

Design junkie who gets super hyped about interior lighting, efficient packaging, and the brushed aluminum plus stained wood aesthetic.

Jack Serrino (me!)

Special X Director, 2018 studying Computer Science

It’s me :) I’m a computer nerd who loves to cook and get stuff done. Hugely into coding and gaming. Might have a low-key anime problem.

Thanks for reading! My friends and I will have a lot to share over the next coming months. Next up, Kavish will reflect on the THINK program rebranding. Stay tuned!

Hello World was originally published in TechX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.