Maryann Gong, a 2013 Pedrozzi Scholar, has excelled as a student-athlete. The All-American runner at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received numerous athletic accolades and is now completing her master’s degree in computer science, exploring the interaction of technology and medicine. She details her college experience:

My four years at MIT were the most difficult and also most rewarding four years of my life so far. I was exposed to so many new technologies and ways of thinking. There were definitely some long nights when I questioned my decision to take a certain class or even enroll in this school, but at the end of each semester I found that I had learned so much. It was an amazing experience to be surrounded by so many talented, intelligent, diverse individuals. However, I can not imagine my undergraduate experience at MIT without being a student-athlete on MIT’s cross country and track and field teams. Being a competitive distance runner at MIT taught me valuable skills of time-management, discipline, and the endurance to push through both physical and mental pain.

Although my time as a student-athlete may have come to an end, I still have one more semester at MIT as a graduate student pursuing my masters degree of engineering in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence. I will be a part of the Data-Driven Inference Group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. My main research will be a continuation of the research I began as an undergraduate. I will explore the application of machine learning to improving ICU patient treatment and intervention. With the growing resource of electronic health records and other health data, there is a huge opportunity for artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to improve the quality of patient care.

Thank you Pedrozzi Foundation for your part in these last four years!

-August 2017