Robin Lassonde spoke in the Junior Colloquium Monday October 29 about some of the mathematics behind her work at Google, namely the “Iterative Proportional Fitting” algorithm. We packed the room, in a very special and professional-looking seminar room on the Psych-side. Robin is a 2012 PhD from our department; her thesis in geometric group theory was supervised by Professor Peter Scott. After graduation, she talked to many friends and friends-of-friends working in industry, and eventually decided to teach herself some skills using on on-line tutorial in a hot area teach companies were hiring in. That summer, she moved to the Bay area (her dream location) for a tech job, and after a year, was lured away to Google to work as a software engineer. She was on the team that created Google pay, where she liked her colleagues but eventually switched to the google surveys team, which she loves for the challenging work, great work-life balance, high salary and supportive colleagues.
Robin’s team is hiring, and also hosts interns, so please let me know if you would like me to put you in touch with her!
