The freshman and the veteran: two Italian boys looking for luck in Silicon Valley

Whether you are a first-year master's student or an end-of-studies student, presenting your work in front of the best American universities and the world's largest technology companies is always a unique experience. This is how Letizia Clementi and Marco Rabozzi, two students and researchers from the NECSTLab of the Milan Polytechnic, come to spend two weeks in Silicon Valley for the ninth conference of the NECST group.

Letizia, the first time in Silicon Valley

For me it was the first time in the United States: I started with a bit of performance anxiety having to talk to the Berkeley University and in front of reality like Pinterest and Facebook. From this experience, I can bring home a greater awareness in the management of the talks and a huge amount of interesting ideas for the future says Letizia, a student in biomedical engineering. The road that took her to the United States was long, with a one – year commitment in practice. In parallel to the course, a preparation was organized for the NECST group conference consisting of meetings with a psychologist, storytelling lessons with a scriptwriter and close contact with the tutors to prepare for the event.

Marco, his fourth experience

One of the veterans of the laboratory who guided the youngest Marco, computer engineer in the last year of the Ph.D. in information technology and behind internships at Microsoft and Google: I was at my fourth NECST Group Conference: this year we went to 42 in the US and the director of NECSTLab Marco Santambrogio asked the one who had the most experience to help young people with still more attention, in a job that has also helped me develop important non technical skills. But in addition to the experience itself, the content of the presentations was also central. I've done research on badyzing data on the impact of the heterogeneity of engineering teams on group performance: I was a little worried about A job that strayed away from the path of a biomedical engineer, but I've seen the open and multi-disciplinary US approach has given me a lot of security, Letizia continues.

More and more attention

Despite his past, Marco noticed some differences from previous editions: we went from presentations made with a few listeners, up to 30 people in the audience, including Xilinx Chief Technology Officer, company that deals with reconfigurable hardware devices. In general, over the years, I've always seen more attention to people and not just projects, says the PhD student. But once this year's NECST group conference is over, we must think about the future. Now, I can not say if I will be able to participate next year too, so long a period of time allows for personal growth that makes any prediction difficult Letizia emphasizes. For Marco, the road seems clearer, especially at work: I have had several experiences abroad, but once my PhD ended, I would like to stay in Italy and continue the startup that I have launched in the world of engines and driving licenses