Monthly Archives: April 2016

Congratulations to Professor C.-C. Jay Kuo, MCL Director, for receiving the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching at the 35th Annual Academic Honors Convocation held in on April 12, 2016, in Town and Gown. The citation for Professor Kuo’s achievements in winning the award is repeated below.

“C.-C. Jay Kuo evinces all of the hallmarks of a truly exceptional teacher—an enlivening passion for his work, a genuine interest in seeing others succeed, and a powerful rapport with his students. His friendly, enthusiastic teaching style, and deep knowledge of signal, media, and information processing theory and applications, make his courses some of the most popular in the electrical engineering program. He regularly draws more than 100 graduate students for these courses, usually in multiple sections.

Professor Kuo emphasizes problem solving through hands‐on experience, enabling his students to combine mathematical theory and computational algorithms with real-world applications. His extraordinary reputation is tantamount to his many achievements as a scholar and researcher. He is the author or co‐author of more than 1,000 published papers and a dozen books.

During his 25 years as a member of the USC faculty, Professor Kuo has advised 125 Ph.D. students and supervised more than two dozen post‐doctoral fellows, ranking him first among the top 50 advisors in the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which compiles information on prominent mathematicians across the world. Several former students have earned important research or leadership positions in academia and the engineering industries. Their successes speak volumes about the long-lasting and powerful impact of Professor Kuo’s superb mentorship.

For his unparalleled expertise in the field of engineering, and the profound wisdom and generosity he brings to his work as an educator, the University of Southern California is proud to honor Professor [...]

Siyang Li, a PhD student in MCLab, obtained an intern offer from Google. Congratulations! We have an interview with her about internship hunting.

What is the normal intern hiring procedure and how did you prepare for it?

For internship in big tech companies, usually we can apply online or through internal referral. If the resume review goes well, we can proceed to phone interviews, solving some programming problems. That definitely requires a lot of practice. I spent several months on it last year. After passing the phone interviews, there are team matching interviews and we need to find out the most suitable team to work with. Good communication skills would help. Sometimes, you have to go through several matching interviews before getting an offer.
I did an intern last year at Google and this year I get a returning offer, which is a lot easier as long as one performs well in previous interns.

How was it like working at Google?

My colleagues were quite helpful. My host was always happy to answer any question and I did ask a lot. The working environment was also quite relaxing. You can get free meals and snacks every day. There are also gyms and video game rooms. Now those facilities become a standard in software industry but I think it was Google who started it.

Any suggestions for your fellows?

I think PhD students should be careful about team matching when searching interns. Working on a project closely related the research topic would be an ideal situation; otherwise, it is better to think twice before accepting an offer. Of course, this strategy increases the risk of not getting an offer, so I would suggest starting intern hunting early. Starting early means more [...]