We all know that CMU students are impressive ones, often with more experience packed into their young lives than some people get in a lifetime. Lizi Ottens, a junior Electrical and Computer Engineering Major with an additional major in Robotics and a minor in Neural Computation embodies the ambitious spirit valued by Carnegie Mellon. Even though she is only a junior, she already has work experience with four different companies, and solid plans for a fifth.
Her first position as a Product Design Manager at Swakker, an app company that allows users to personalize mobile messaging, was a lesson in networking. According to Ottens, the CEO of Swakker was alum of the high school Ottens attended, Choate Rosemary Hall, and gave a talk to computer science students at the school the year she got the position. After a letter of recommendation from a high school professor, Ottens got the job.
In her time at Swakker, Ottens’ aggregated several iPhone applications into one, lead quality and reliability testing efforts, and managed marketing interns.
Ottens didn’t waste any time in finding another impressive endeavor to pursue – the same month that her first stint at Swakker ended, she started a six-month fellowship with the Blue Brain Project in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Blue Brain Project is a project that is attempting to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain to the molecular level in order to create a synthetic brain. Ottens specifically analyzed the correlation between the Neuroligin-4 gene and autism in mice (turns out there is none) in addition to performing neuronal cell reconstruction. Wow.
Ottens said, “I got the job at the Blue Brain Project by emailing the founder and expressing how amazing I thought the project was. I was interested in working in the intersection of neuroscience and robotics, and they were just starting to integrate robotics into their project, so it was perfect timing.” This illustrates a point CMU star Randy Pausch made in his book The Last Lecture – it never hurts to ask about something you want.
After her first year at CMU (which was prefaced by another four-month shift at Swakker), Ottens landed a summer position at NASA working as a Lunar Micro Rover Robotics Academy Intern. In her time at NASA, Ottens worked as the Project Leader for the Avionics Subsystem on LMR-Alpha and LMR-P6A. In addition, she worked a backtracking algorithm that allows the LMR to autonomously recover lost radio signal on the moon. You know, just your typical summer job kind of stuff.
Last summer, Ottens worked as an intern for Astrobotic, a company founded by CMU professor Red Whittaker and his associates. Astrobotic delivers space robotics and planetary missions, although Ottens worked mostly on helicopters. She worked on visual odometry and map registration for their sensor package. She and her team were testing it on a dataset of images taken on board a helicopter, but the end goal was for it to go on a lander. “It’s neat because there’s no GPS on the moon, and sensors such as IMUs are computationally expensive,” said Ottens.
Just in case you aren’t impressed yet, Ottens recently learned that she is the recipient of a $10,000 scholarship from Apple, and will be working on the Core OS team with Apple this summer. She will be part of a team working on machine learning, which Apple uses for things such as intelligent task management on the iPhone. Ottens received the scholarship and position after applying for the iOS Scholarship for Women and Technology.
After reading that impressive resume, you would think this girl doesn’t have any time for extracurricular activities or social interactions. You would be wrong. Ottens holds memberships in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Society of Women Engineers, Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and MENSA. She is also a sister of the Delta Xi Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma and is a TA for 70-419, Entrepreneurship Practicum: Apprentice.
On a biased and more personal note, Lizi Ottens is one of the sweetest and most down-to-earth people I have ever met. She never looks to brag about any of her really impressive accomplishments – in fact, unless you ask about them, you would never know about all of the incredible experiences she already has under her belt. Not only does she embody the innovative and ambitious spirit of a Carnegie Mellon student, she is also a pleasant person with a sweet personality.