"Through the MISTI Internship program I was given the opportunity to work in Beijing, China for the summer of 2008. I interned with EMC, a prominent information management company. I did meaningful and interesting work while being fully immersed in a culture that was entirely new and eye-opening to me. I spent my weekends traveling with my coworkers to fascinating sites and attractions around Beijing. I visited the Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City, Houhai Lake, Tsinghua University, and countless others. I celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival alongside dozens of new friends, and even attended the Olympic Games where I saw Michael Phelps win a gold medal right before my eyes! It was an eventful and meaningful summer that I will always remember. I recommend MIT's international internship programs to any student with a desire to see and better understand the world in which we live."

"I spent my summer of 2008 as an intern in Regensburg, Germany at Osram Opto Semiconductors GmbH, where I programmed a conversion tool in C++ for optical ray files. My internship was planned through the MISTI MIT Germany program, and the program's coordinators made the internship search extremely easy. My main reasons for working abroad included strengthening my German language skills, living in a different culture, and understanding how engineering is done in another part of the world. My boss had high expectations, but I left the summer with more practical experience than any semester at MIT. In addition to gaining a new skill set, I had an incredible time visiting Salzburg, Austria for the Eurocup and driving 1700 km around Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg on a major roadtrip. To read more about an amazing summer and see picture of my travels, check out: http://www.billindeutschland.blogspot.com/ "

"I spent the summer of 2008 at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) in Beijing through the MIT 6A program. One of my favorite things about MSRA was the many technical talks given that are open to anyone who is interested; it reminded me of MIT. My work at MSRA was on text-to-speech, in the Speech Group. At work we spoke English, but when it came to restaurants, transportation, and bargaining at the shops, everything was easier in Chinese. I had studied Chinese at MIT, and working in Beijing was a chance for me to put some of it to use. I visited sites like the Great Wall, The Summer Palace, Tiananmen and BeiHai with other students in Beijing. I also took at trip to Shanghai and Xi'an, and climbed to the top of Mt. HuaShan. It was rewarding to get to practice the language I had been learning, and also do an Electrical Engineering internship at the same time."

"I never thought the versatility of being a good software engineer could allow me to travel the world and immerse myself in a completely new culture. Through my skills developed at MIT, I am afforded the freedom of exploring an exciting European city such as Barcelona. I'm not sure which is more interesting: understanding a perspective of my own country among foreigners or witnessing one's own cultural habits change in such an exotic environment. I am grateful and happy that the MIT MISTI program has allowed me to experience these things and more."

"Because research is fundamentally about solving difficult problems, and such challenges exist for everyone everywhere, there is no better way to explore the unknown than through the combined perspectives and efforts of researchers with completely different styles and cultures. Through the EECS VI-A International Program I worked with inspiring friends and colleagues at Google Beijing this past summer. This experience has shown me the hope that lies in our collective human ingenuity."

"My stay at the Politecnico di Milano offered me a chance to recast my experiences at MIT. If you would like to participate in an entirely different academic environment, open yourself to a new culture, or otherwise expand your horizons, this program is for you."

"Research is about working together to solve tough problems and working in diverse teams helps us explore all sorts of possibilties. Spending a summer working for Analog Devices in Shanghai gave me exposure to working in a new environment much different from my previous internships within the US. I gained a new appreciation for the challenges faced by multinational research teams as well as how much they can achieve together working effectively around the clock."

Image, lower left, as labeled, of Stephanie Hsu at Mt. Tai in Shandong Province, China, summer 2008.

"In order to begin understanding the complexities of the human brain, I have always felt that a unique approach is needed. As an aspiring neuroscientist, I have sought to learn the essentials of EE/CS and apply the understanding to brain research. This past summer, I wanted to immerse myself in a different atmosphere to gain a new understanding of experimentation. I worked at the Honda Research Institute in Tokyo on using electrophysiology to understand how the brain recognizes images. There is a fundamental phenomenon that occurs when a human is able to instantly glance at an image and understand its context and meaning. However, no computer algorithm is able to recognize images as quickly or as accurately as the human brain, even with better optics than the human eye.

So, at Honda, we sought to understand how the brain was able to recognize images by studying subjects via electroencephalography. Through signal processing, we were able to discover fundamental patterns in the frontal cortex of the brain that correlate well to image recognition. This was a small step forward in understanding the characteristic physiology behind image recognition in the brain. And it was through the unique hypothesis-driven research approach of the Japanese that help me push to find this discovery, in which we used to further understand the physiology within the brain.

I felt that being in Japan exposed me to a new way of thinking, one in which I will always keep in mind as I pursue my career in neuroscience."