>> GABRIEL: I kind of always knew I wanted to do something
with engineering, but I don't think I knew
what engineering was.
[laughing]
I did a few of the introduction courses.
I did Engineering 101.
And I think that was my first introduction
to computer science and I think that's what
kind of sucked me in and what has led me here today.
>> CELIA: So I think just for the sake of the video
would should start off with like very formal introductions
and for the sake of ourselves.
So my name is Celia.
I am a rising senior in Industrial
and Operations Engineering.
I am from Denver, Colorado.
And I have loved being at Michigan.
I feel like it's a really incredible community,
both socially and academically.
And I'm really excited to hear about your experiences.
So tell me about yourself.
>> GABRIEL: All right, so my name is Gabriel Pascualy.
I'm originally from Seattle, Washington.
And I graduated in 2017.
I studied Computer Science
and I did a minor in Math...somehow.
[laughing]
>> CELIA: Magically.
>> GABRIEL: Let's see, so after graduation I moved to Boston
and I started working at a company called
the Mitre Corporation and I've been there
for almost three years now.
>> CELIA: Wow, oh congratulations. >> GABRIEL: Yeah.
>> CELIA: So what does Mitre do?
Like how would you explain what the company does
to somebody who's never heard of it before?
>> GABRIEL: So it's kind of a funky designation.
So Mitre runs a set of FFRDCs,
which are federally funded research and development centers.
They were designed initially so that the government
could have these technology centers
that didn't fluctuate with their staffing
and would be a place where we could do research
and innovate and develop different technologies
that were required,
both for the government at the time,
but also with an eye to the future.
So a portion of the funds that get appropriated
to these organizations, the organizations have the freedom
to decide how they spend that money.
So we're typically looking five or ten years out.
And that money goes into an internal research program.
>> CELIA: So what do you specifically work on
or contribute to in your role?
>> GABRIEL: So I'm an Embedded Security Engineer.
I guess I can't talk much about the specific research
that I do, but I can talk about one of the projects
that I worked on during my internship.
It's kind of like a super advanced anti-virus software.
Typically anti-virus software just runs on your machine
as a normal program, maybe as an administrator
privilege level, but if there's anything below those layers
that's malicious it can hide itself.
So what this software does, is it kind of sits
outside of your computer.
Whatever malicious software could be running
on your computer or at any privilege level on your computer,
it can't hide.
>> CELIA: What's your favorite part of your job?
Like do you prefer the teamwork?
Do you prefer the individual project work?
Do you prefer the networking aspect?
Like which aspect of your job
do you think is your most favorite and why?
>> GABRIEL: That's a good question.
I think, and maybe this is because my work environment
has changed a little bit in the last few months,
but I definitely love being in the same place
as a bunch of people that have different interests
and different kind of deep technical knowledge.
And I think that's something that I also love about Michigan
where you have people that are all studying
very different things but are, or will soon be,
at the forefront of their respective fields.
We have a shuttle that goes to work
and I think the number of times
I've just been on that shuttle and have ended up
sparking some conversation about something
that I'd never thought of.
For example my research, it was just talking to a friend
and an idea comes out of there.
And I'm like, oh that's an interesting idea.
Maybe I'll write a proposal for it.
And here I am a year later studying that, half my time.
>> CELIA: What was your favorite part about
studying Computer Science?
Like what made you go from being interested in it,
to falling in love with it and wanting to continue that
through your Michigan career?
>> GABRIEL: Looking back on it, it was definitely the projects.
At Michigan they do a great job
of project based learning,
whether it's individual projects
where you're doing a programming assignment,
or you're working with a team
to develop some application or some functionality.
At the time I didn't know this,
but the professors there do an amazing job
of implementing, I guess, auto graders.
So you kind of submit your, you went through this in 101,
you know you submit your project
and then it gives you a score.
In some courses if you're designing a program to be fast,
it'll kind of rank you against other student's programs.
And I think that that just does an incredible job
of motivating and game-ifying the experience.
>> CELIA: Do you have any projects that stick out to you
in your mind as some of your favorite projects
you worked on in college?
>> GABRIEL: Yeah, so Operating Systems was my favorite course.
You had to create a file system,
like a file browser but that could be used
by multiple people across a bunch of different computers.
So you think like SharePoint or Google Drive,
we had to implement something that was like that.
And I just remember a lot of long nights,
but yeah, long nights, early mornings,
and being really frustrated up until
we finally completed the whole thing.
I'm thinking back to high school,
I never had the experience of a project where
the teacher wasn't gonna come in
and give you the answer and help just drive you towards it.
You had to work as a team and figure things out.
>> CELIA: Do you feel like there were specific classes
or specific experiences,
that maybe you've mentioned or haven't mentioned,
that really really positively or really negatively
impacted your transition to your work life
and your knowledge, and your ability to learn things,
and that kind of thing.
>> GABRIEL: I'm trying to think of negative ones,
[laughing]
but one of the positive ones,
and this is more early college.
So of course it influenced career,
but I can't say it directly influenced career.
And that was the undergraduate research
opportunities program.
Is that what the acronym is?
[laughing]
Yeah, so coming into school,
like every Freshman does, I just kind of like applied
and signed up for everything.
And that program positively impacted me,
cause right away it forces you to go and get interviewed
by a bunch of different professors.
And number one, getting that exposure
to talking to faculty, and then number two,
getting a better understanding of how helpful it is
to have mentors or role models
as things to follow.
I think it's easy to go to school
and look at your course guide and be like,
all right hello syllabus, hello course guide,
let's do this.
And I think that Michigan does a great job
of kinda putting together a course guide
that will lead you to the person
in that field of study that you want to be,
but having someone that's real
is particularly helpful.
But I think you do have to be careful
not to get stretched too thin.
Like I said, signing up for a bunch of things,
or feeling like you need to have one extra sticker.
I think that when you're in the moment
and you're seeing other students
that are doing double majors
and also play professional badminton or something,
you can feel like you need to do
something like that as well.
And it's usually not the case.
>> CELIA: So looking at, zooming out,
looking at yourself where you are,
and what you're doing in your career,
are you meeting the goals that you set
for yourself when you left college?
Do you have more goals that you want to meet
in the future as you progress in your professional career?
>> GABRIEL: So I guess coming out of school,
you have like that base foundational knowledge
across a bunch of different topics.
And as my manager now likes to describe it,
you should work on the engineering T,
which is the top of the T is the breadth,
and then this is the depth.
So when you go into your career
you want to gain some breadth across your domain.
And then find one topic and get the depth.
Whether that means jumping on projects
that particularly focus on that skill area,
or pursing some research in a specific sub domain.
And that's kind of how I'm conceptualizing
I think the first few years out of school.
It's basically focusing on that T.
I think my goals later on are definitely to gain
some leadership skills, gain the ability
to organize people and build bigger, better things.
I'm definitely noticing now as kind of an individual
contributor and someone that's doing independent research,
there's only so much you can do in one day.
But to be able to think about a problem abstractly
and come up with kind of an attack plan
that could take 5, 10, 15 people
is something that I'm working towards.
>> CELIA: So thank you so much for taking the time
to tell us about your experiences
and your life outside of Michigan and at Michigan.
I know that everything you said
will be very, very beneficial.
So I appreciate you for doing this.
>> GABRIEL: I appreciate getting the opportunity, thank you.