Summer Tech Interns present their research projects at their closing event. Photo credit: Carl Ankrum
This summer marked DPI’s first paid internship program for college freshmen and sophomores. The Pritzker Tech Talent Labs initiative targets DPI program alumni and Chicago-based students looking to build their resume with real-world work experience and connect with the local tech community.
For six weeks, the 26 students completed a series of micro-internship projects pairing them with Chicago tech companies, nonprofits and internal DPI projects. They spent two half-days with their host organization and the other three days at DPI and around the city, where they worked on an impromptu pitch competition, honed their financial literacy and networking skills, and met leaders across the tech sector.
Why it matters
Summer Tech Interns offered the students — some of whom were previous Digital Scholars at DPI — continued support in their journey toward potential tech careers. Specifically geared toward students who are traditionally underrepresented in the tech ecosystem, the program aims to increase Chicago’s tech talent supply.
Projects, planned and otherwise
At their closing ceremony August 6 at DPI headquarters, four groups of students presented their projects:
- Michael Charles and Daniel Paredes, who built a migrant resource customization dashboard under the supervision of senior research associate Anuj Tiwari
- Philip Nakamura, who analyzed online privacy policies in Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin as part of a DPI R&D research project under the supervision of senior research associate Yuanye Ma and graduate student Muhammad Hassan
- Kadijahto Sylla, who worked on a PFAS sensor dashboard with Marcia Silva, DPI’s associate director of R&D
- Christy Kwentua, Rogelio Lozano, and Amara Moreno, who worked on product development analysis and recommendations at Google. Their proposed project, YouShop, is an integrated e-commerce platform to build on YouTube.
Charles did an additional presentation. At an event at Google earlier in the summer, he and Albert Huynh, both students at UIC, ended up chatting about the difficulty in finding study groups for their classes. Thus was born Akknoledge: an app to connect students to other students in their classes and integrate study sessions into their calendars. Charles and Huynh, who did not know each other before this summer, plan to keep working on the app beyond their internship.
Thank you!
Funding for Summer Tech Interns was provided by One Summer Chicago, a gift from Google, and a grant from GET Cities.
On the left: Michael Charles and Albert Huynh demonstrate their app Akknolege. On the right: Christy Kwentua, Amara Moreno, and Rogelio Lozano discuss YouShop, a project they worked on at Google. Both photographs by Carl Ankrum.
Author: Jeanie Chung