The Power of Self-Motivation: How one MIT student is finding her path.
It was a calm Friday morning for the global investment analyst team at Goldman Sachs, when suddenly, at 9:04 a.m., everything changed. Amazon announced its acquisition of Whole Foods, and the team kicked into a high-speed frenzy to provide information to investors. Research analyst intern Caroline Liu loved it.
“Suddenly, I wasn’t focusing on my own company’s model; I was trying to understand the grocery store space,” Liu said. “[At Goldman Sachs] I’ve learned to look at a different perspective: What exactly are investors thinking when they go to buy the stock of a company?”
Liu is a mechanical engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who thrives in fast-paced environments. She is smart, self-motivated and excited by the fast-paced, high-level thinking her current internship requires. Liu’s ambitious, action-oriented attitude has driven her to become a standout student leader at MIT.
When Liu began her freshman year at MIT she wanted to get involved in research, but she didn’t expect it to become such an important part of her college experience.
Liu spent over two years researching at MIT’s Laboratory for Bio-Inspired Interfaces working under Professor Niels Holten-Anderson. Liu said that her professor gave students a lot of autonomy in the project, allowing Liu to take it in her own direction. This experience was the launch of Liu’s intense college career: the challenges she faced in the lab only made her stronger and more self-motivated going forward.
“In research, there are times when nothing in the lab works out: All your experiments fail and you have no idea what’s going on. Initially it was hard for me, I feel like I’ve never really experienced consistent failure without any explanation, but over time I grew in my desire to do this project to completion,” Liu said. “Research was a unique place that taught me the power of self-motivation.”
Liu’s self-motivation didn’t steer her wrong — her project was extremely successful. Her work attracted substantial funding and was published in MIT Energy Initiative’s Energy Futures magazine. It didn’t stop there: Liu was invited to present her findings at C3E Women in Clean Energy Conference in 2015. She continued to pursue research opportunities in MIT’s Synthetic Biology Policy Group.
But how a biology researcher end up doing investment research at Goldman Sachs? Liu’s interests extend far beyond biology and mechanical engineering. She is also pursuing minors in economics and management. Her self-motivated attitude applies to all the work she does.
Liu’s passion for science, engineering and finance all contribute to her interest in the energy space. Whenever Liu isn’t in the research lab, she is busy organizing the MIT Energy Club, of which she will be co-president this upcoming school year.

When Liu joined the MIT Energy Club, the organization’s main purpose was to expose students to energy companies. Liu proposed and planned MIT’s first Energy Career Fair and worked as the content director for the 2017 MIT Energy Conference.
But during her time as co-president, Liu wants the MIT Energy Club to be more than a pre-professional student organization. In addition to helping students find jobs, Liu plans for the club to create a space for energy education. She said the club was initially founded at Muddy Charles Pub, a pub inside an MIT campus building, to welcome academic discussions between students.
“I feel like we’ve forgotten our roots,” Liu said. “[People] would bring in papers about emerging energy technology, or more politically-oriented papers, and they would go grab beers and talk about the topic. I want to make an effort to have these [discussion-based] seminars where we can go back to the basics.”

As Liu enters her senior year at MIT, she has learned a lot about herself and established her goals going forward. Her advice to underclassmen is to recognize their own strengths, weaknesses and passions.
“I think it’s really important to be honest with yourself and be honest with the people around you,” Liu said. “If you’re not honest with yourself, you’re not learning what you’re good at and passionate about.”
As Liu thinks ahead to her future, she wants to work in a fast-paced environment that coincides with her personal drive. She is considering pursuing a career in energy investing to address complex problems within the energy industry.

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