Framsida

DESTINATION

PROJECT

Insida Framsida Logotyp

2015-2016

Publisher:Axel Ingo

Graphic design & layout:Sara Edin

Find us online: www. projectdestination.sefacebook.com/projectdestination instagram.com/projectdestination

Project group: Axel Ingo, Azadeh Hajiakbar, Amanda Enocksson, Christopher Lindström, Emanuel Onoszko, Mattias Hallersbo, Melissa Burt, Rebecca Axelsson, Sara Edin, Tommy Luncqvist

This years partners

Our partners

Contents

1Project Destination

What is Project Destination?The project groupOur eventsOur main partnerOur journey

1351113

15Destination: Hong Kong

Hong Kong IntroJourney in HKThe University of Hong KongH&MHuawei

1517212325

27Destination: San Francisco

San Francisco IntroJourney in SFStanford University500 StartupsFacebookNASA Ames Research CenterMaster Thesis at NASASamsungEricssonGoogle

49What is your destination?

Our destinationApply for Project Destination 2016/2017Thanks

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1What is Project Destination?

What is project Destination?

Project Destination is a yearly driven stu-dent led project with the goal of inspiring other students at KTH to pursue the inter-national career opportunities that exists in to-day's global society. Our objective is to create events for the students with companies that in some way have an international approach to their business. This approach could either be as a large global company like our main part-ner Atlas Copco, or be in the form of interna-tional customers like BMW and Audi which is the case of CAE Value. The project consists of two main parts: the events for the students to develop business relationships and a field trip to companies at a location in the world

chosen by the project team to inspire everyo-ne of the international possibilities that exists both during and after our studies.

Our vision throughout this whole year has been to focus on creating events with the hig-hest quality possible and thereby win-win-win situations. Our partners win by meeting the spe-cific students they are interested in employing in the future. Students win by meeting companies interested in their specific competencies and interest for international opportunities. Project Destination wins by making our partners and all students happy with a high level of service, quality of content and exclusive food.

What is Project Destination?

As I write this text, I am sitting in a new Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, somewhere over the middle of the Paci-fic Ocean, flying between Beijing and San Francisco as part of the the Project Destination trip 2016. I am joined by nine great students, all from different parts of KTH and all selected to be a part of the the Pro-ject Destination team. Together, we have spent the last year working hard to create the best possible events for students and companies to meet and de-velop their relationships. To further inspire all of you, we have spent the last week in Hong Kong and will spend the upcoming week in San Francisco, making personal visits to great companies like H&M, NASA, Google; and telling you their stories and possibilities for you throughout this magazine.

But life wasn’t always as great as it seems to be right now. I still remember the moment in early June of last year, when my predecessor Noa Julin called and asked me to take over his role as Project Manager of Project Destination. I said yes without hesitating but immediately after call, I got terribly nervous. What am I going to do now? I have been handed the re-sponsibility of a great project that I barely knew of one month ago. Well, 10 months later, the team has created a record breaking 14 different events with 10 companies, with over 1170 unique students regis-tering for one or more event! Thank you all so much for being a part of this great year!

It is easy to look at all this and see the glance of our performance, but what is really Project Destination? Keep on reading to get to know this year’s project!

2 Text: Axel Ingo

4 The team3The team

The teamEmanuel Onoszko

International Relations & Finance ManagerIndustrial Engineering and

Management, yr 4

Azadeh HajiakbarEvent Manager

Industrial Engineering and Management, yr 5

Amanda EnockssonEvent Manager

Design and Product Realisation, Product Innovation, yr 4

Melissa BurtInternational Relations

Media Technology, yr 3

Axel IngoProject Manager

Aerospace Engineering, yr 4

Rebecca AxelssonVice Project ManagerIndustrial Engineering and Management, yr 4

Mattias HallersboSales Manager

Industrial Engineering and Management, yr 4

Tommy LundqvistMarketing Manager

Mechanical Engineering, Integra-ted Product Development, yr 5

Sara EdinArt Director

Media Technology, yr 5

Christopher LindströmIT Manager

Media Technology, yr 4

5Events 2015-2016

Events 2015-2016

LUNCH SEMINAR WITH SCHIBSTEDThe year started off with a suc-cessful lunch seminar by Schibsted Media Group, concerning their Sum-mer internship and management trai-nee programme.

15-10-2015

MEET WITH CAE VALUEDuring this afternoon, students got to meet with CAE Value. They have recent-ly established an office in Stockholm and are looking to recruit multiple junior en-gineers within the coming years.

27-01-2016

LUNCH SEMINAR WITH ATLAS COPCODuring our main partner Atlas Copco’s first lunch seminar together with this year’s Project Destination, they talked about themselves and their Global Sum-mer Internship

28-01-2016

6 Photos: Sara Edin

RECRUITMENT EVENT WITH EY ADVISORY SERVICESDuring the evening February 15th, EY Advisory Services hosted a recruiting event in cooperation with Project Destination. 20 students had been selected and enjoyed an evening that included a case competition, dinner, boule and mingling with consultants from EY. The management consulting part of EY, Advisory Ser-vices, was in search of future employees from KTH in-terested in the team IT Risk and Assurance.

The event started with an interesting introduction about the firm and the team IT Risk and Assurance. The case was then presented and the students were divided into smaller groups with one hour to solve the case be-fore presenting their solutions in front of a jury and the other students. After the challenging case, dinner was

served and the students had the chance to mingle with the consultants. When everyone was satisfied with the dinner, taxis stood ready to drive everyone to Boule Bar, where drinks were served and a competition in a more relaxing environment began.

To sum up, the evening was not only challenging but also offered time to under relaxed circumstances learn about future possibilities as a management consultant at EY while having a great time!

If you have any questions about working as a manage-ment consultant at EY, please get in contact with KTH alumni Christopher Nordin at christopher.nordin@se.ey.com.

18-02-2016

SPEED DATING WITH ATLAS COPCOAtlas Copco invited students to their HQ in Sickla for a unique one-on-one night with their employees.

24-02-2016

WEEKEND EVENT WITH SPOTIFYSpotify and Project Destination joined forces for this awesome full day of case- solving where we combined business and tech.

27-02-2016

LUNCH SEMINAR WITH KINNARPSAt the event, Kinnarps presented what they do as well as talked about what the future beholds with the increasing need for integrated technology.

04-03-2016

DAY-EVENT AT ERASTEELErasteel invited students to visit their head office to learn more about the company, their R&D activities and what opportunities they offer graduates.

09-03-2016

8 Photos: Sara Edin

LUNCH SEMINAR WITH ELUELU talked about their prestigious pro-ject Slussen and opportunities within the company during this seminar.

10-02-2016

LUNCH SEMINAR WITH ATLAS COPCODuring this second lunch seminar, re-presentatives from Atlas Copco talked about processes of innovation in a glo-bal corporation.

12-02-2016

7Events 2015-2016

DEN BÄSTA PLATSEN ATT BÖRJA DIN KARRIÄR PÅ

VÄLKOMMEN TILL ELU. Vi vill öppna portarna och släppa in dig i några av landets största och mest komplexa projekt. Slussen och Arenastaden

i Stockholm och nya Hisingsbron i Göteborg är några av våra aktuella uppdrag.

På ELU finns landets främsta konstruktörer inom bygg-, an läggnings- och geoteknikområdet. För dig som ska ut i arbets-livet – och som menar allvar med ditt yrkesval – är ELU den bästa platsen att börja din karriär på.

Du kommer in på ett företag som är stort nog för att du ska kunna ut vecklas i din egen riktning. Du blir dess utom en del av en organisation som har tydliga värderingar och en lärande miljö och som delar med sig av sina stora kunskaper och erfarenheter till dig som är yngre och vill växa.

ELU driver branschens utveckling inom ett flertal teknik-områden, där till exempel 3D- projektering, FEM-beräkningar och BIM är speciellt aktuellt just nu. I den här utvecklingen är du välkommen med dina kunskaper och ditt öppna perspektiv.

Välkommen till ELU. Den bästa platsen att börja din karriär på.

CHARLOTTE BERGMAN vd

ELU är en av landets ledande konstruktörer inom bygg-, anläggnings- och geoteknikområdet med runt 200 medarbetare och kontor i Göte-borg, Helsing borg och Stockholm. www.elu.se

CHARLOTTE BERGMAN VD

LUNCH SEMINAR WITH FMVDuring this long lunch, representatives from the aeronautics department pre-sented their work within the Meteor programme.

10-03-2016

SAAB UNIVERISTY DAYSDuring a full day visit at Saabs facilities in Linköping, the students had the opportu-nity to look, touch and feel all the products from all different areas of business, both civil and military.

09-04-2016

OPEN HOUSE AT ELUA number of lucky students got to visist ELU at their office for one day.

07-04-2016

EVENING EVENT WITH LIFESUMAn evening event with food and drinks where Lifesum presented their Growth Internship and a lot of other career opportunities.

21-04-2016

9Events 2015-2016

11 12A story from our Main Partner, Atlas Copco Text: Axel Ingo, Photo: Sara Edin

Annsofie Andersson has just moved back from a six month deployment in France as part of the Short term assignement with Atlas Copco. But it all started many years ago in a completely different business, biology.

In 2004, Annsofie started the engineering program in Bioinformatics at Uppsala University. The program is fo-cused on programming applied on biological data, which was something she found really interesting when she star-ted her studies. However, after a few years, she became more and more interested in HCI, Human-Computer In-teraction. She switched field on studies to be able to take more courses within HCI, thus graduating 6 months later. After spending her first year at the university studying data array for cancer pharmacology and informatics, she found a work ad within HCI at Atlas Copco!— The job ad that I read made me really interested in the position, as it was focused on HCI and required work close to the customers. When I first started at Atlas Copco, I didn’t know a lot about the company. Looking back, I can tell you that the company is huge. As soon as you get a foot inside, you can steer your career in the direction you want to go. The whole world is available to you!” Annsofie says when asked about her first impres-sions of Atlas Copco.

How did you progress within Atlas Copco?

— I started as a developer back in 2011. After two years, I was promoted to Team Coordinator, which basically is our title for a team leader. So the responsibilities grew to include coordination with other teams and customers, in addition to leading a team of 5 developers. That’s when my interest for an international career started to grow!

Interesting. You told us earlier that you could ste-

er your career in the direction you wan-

ted. How did you do that once you beca-

me interested in an international career?

— Well, I wasn’t a senior within the compa-ny yet and wanted to know more about Atlas Copco, but also wanted a challenge to increase my personal development and programming skills. So I had a meeting with my boss, and he told me about the Short Term assignment possi-bility with Atlas Copco, which basically is a six months relocation to another Atlas Copco site somewhere in the world. So I started pulling some strings, sending out emails to teams that were within my field of interest. I got positive responses, especially from the site in Nantes, France. This all happened in 2013.

But Annsofie didn’t leave Sweden in 2013. Instead, she got pregnant and left for maternity leave. However, as soon as she came back last summer, she and her family all moved down to France to start the short term assignment. This was possible as her partner took out his parental leave during those months. Further, she tells us about the reaction her family and friend made when noticed about the move.— Everyone was super excited and we had a lot of people visiting us! It was so much fun. My mum however has a bit skeptical *laughter*.

— When we moved down, I didn’t speak a word of French. Suddenly, you work a place where English is not the language that most people are comfortable with. So you just had to open up and try your best. For example, I tried to learn as much French as possible and to start my conversations in French, to

show them that I really tried to acclimatize. It’s all about leaving your comfort zone.” she continues.

What are your advices for student looking

at an international career?

— Dare to take the step out of your comfort zone! It will be tough at times, but we are eng-ineers and we’re used to solve problems. If we have a will and inner drive, we can succeed. As you first step for an international career, you shouldn’t get sad if you can’t get to the country of your dreams. See any opportunity to move abroad as a possibility for experience and per-sonal development. Leave your stereotypes at home and be open up for the local culture.

What will be your next step in your inter-

national career?

— I’d like to move towards project manage-ment. It would be fun to take on a project in a revitalizing country like India. We have facili-ties there so it would be nice. Family of course has to join me. No matter what, it probably wasn’t the last time that I moved abroad!

Atlas Copco shows clear commitments when regarding the personal development oppor-tunities they offer their employees. The short term assignment is one clear example of that. Another example is the International Summer Internship Program, that each year enrolls 4-5 engineering students for an amazing eight week summer job abroad. The application for 2016 is closed, but keep your eyes open for future applications if you want the best pos-sibility to kick-start your international career!

Have you ever thought of doing something, but didn’t dare to do it because of a single factor? The story of Annsofie Andersson will take you through her decision to change her field of study during her time at Uppsala University, as well as the decision to move to France with a newborn baby for a six months Short Term assignment.

Dare to take the step out of your comfort zone

AROUND THE WORLD IN 2 WEEKS

HKG

SFO

26-03-2016 02-04-2016arrival departure

02-04-2016 09-04-2016arrival departure

Hong Kong

San Francisco

HKG - SFO14HKG - SFO 13

Text & Photo: Sara Edin1615Destination: Hong Kong

Hong Kong

It took us a total of fourteen hours on different flights, spanning seven time zones and a three hour stop in Doha before we arrived at Hong Kong airport. By then, we could not imagine how much travel Hong Kong actually was worth. The fascination with the city started before we landed, as we flew over Lantau and saw Big Buddha and the cable car’s hanging in the air. The se-cond wooooah-feeling struck when we walked from the metro station to our hotel in Wan Chai. All surrounding building where skyscrapers. All of them. The buildings shoot into the air like canyon walls. Another thing we could not avoid noticing was that it was a left-hand traf-fic, which maybe was to expect since Hong Kong until recently (1997) has been a British colony. Today Hong Kong is a dependent territory belonging to China and one of the world’s leading financial centras.

18 Text & Photos: Sara Edin & Christopher Lindström

LANTAU: BIG BUDDHA AND TAI OOur first tourist trip was to the island Lantau, outside of Hong Kong Island. The cable car ride to get to the island was one of the best things during the trip. We were lucky to get a great view of the island and the ocean (as the weather was clear for once). The 34 me-tres high Buddha made of bronze was spect-acularly to see but the surroundings was very “touristy”, with tourist shops and people run-ning around with cameras (including us). Later we took a bus to the fishing island Tai O and walked around for a few hours, seeing the fis-hermen and and how they lived. Soon, away from all other tourists, we ended up on a hill behind the village with a great great view of the ocean. This trip was all about the views.

Destination: Hong Kong

MACAOOne short ferry trip away from Hong Kong lies Macao. It is, as Hong Kong, a dependent territory belonging to China. The city’s main revenue comes from games and casino-activi-ties and is seen as the “Las Vegas of Asia”. By chance we happened to end up at the world’s largest casino, something we did not knew when we were there. With its 51.000 sqm ca-sino area the Venetian in Macao is far larger than it’s role model in Las Vegas.

17

Low entrance fee, live music between the races and a lot of different nationalities in one place. Happy Valley racecourse is just chaotic enough to make you stay for hours. We gambled on a couple of races without wasting too much money.

HAPPY VALLEY RACECOURSE

Hong kong is indeed the city of views. If you ever come across a picture of Hong Kong, we are 99% certain that it will be of the view from Victoria Peak. It is a scenic location on the mountainside overlooking the whole city of Hong Kong that you do not want to miss.

VICTORIAS PEAK

One early morning we decided to take the hike around Dragon’s Back, a later very appreciated decision. The track is beautiful and easy to get around with amazing views and lovely nature. Bring your best walking shoes, tasty snacks, tons of water and a lot of time and you will have a great day!

DRAGON’S BACK

19 20 Text & Photos: Sara Edin & Christopher LindströmDestination: Hong Kong

Hong kong is probably one of the best rooftop bar-cities in the world. Most bars belong to a hotel and therefore a little more expensive than one would wish for. But yeah, a view is included with that drink. It feels like sitting in the crown of a very high tree. One bar really worth na-me-dropping is Ozone. When sipping on a drink at floor 118 watching out the window, it is hard to remember that you are in a skyscraper and not flying.

ROOFTOP BARS

If you are looking for a new pair of sunglasses or a copy of anything, you should visit Temple street market. We were there for a couple of hours, watched all the crazy copies (we even saw loads of fjällrävens backpack “kån-ken”) and ate asian food before heading up north at Kowloon for some beer.

TEMPLE STREET MARKET

22 Text: Tommy Lundqvist, Photos: Sara Edin

Looking out over rooftops of surrounding buildings the university surely has an astoun-ding environment with cosy outdoor facilities and green areas. The first thing that meets you as you enter the university is six elevators to take you up to the correct level and lecture rooms. Six elevators through which the majo-rity of the university passes in the morning, and even though the locals were incredible at forming queues, it was not hard to imagine the panic in the morning rush.

The school which carries the motto wis-dom and virtue is comprised of both engine-ering and medical faculties. With a competitive admission and rich student life the campus is buzzling with people, even during the easter breaks. The outdoor corridors are filled with student stalls displaying student associations, sports associations and people practising in-struments or playing games. What still hits you is the extreme cleanliness of all the facilities, no matter outdoor or indoors.

For a KTH student there are no existing collaborations for exchange at the moment, however, for those interested in an experience abroad and exploring a new country or culture Hong Kong University offers the HKU Sum-mer Institute. It consist of a variety of courses and programmes comprised over the summer

where the students get the full experience of attending the university with engineering cour-ses with university credits and extracurricular activities. The programme offers seven dif-ferent directions, from Business and Mana-gement to Science and Technology. With an official language of English on campus HKU aims to connect Asia and the world and bases the Summer institute either on campus or as a Multi-location programme with courses both in Shanghai and Seoul. The institute takes place during a four week period, from the 19th of June to July 17th. With this year’s application process un-fortunately already exceeded. Apart from stu-dies in engineering they also offer teaching in either Mandarin or Cantonese and a residential package were the student is spared the hunt for an apartment in Hong Kong and instead stays at campus, with everything from high table dinners, hikes or trips organised by the school. With KTH having exchange programs with other universities in Hong Kong, HKU hopes to build relations with KTH in the fu-ture. As the project team left the campus the noises from a very vivid and rich student life lingered in the background.

Destination: Hong Kong 21

Seven minutes from Hong Kong’s central business district you can find Hong Kong University, the oldest and most prestige’s university in Hong Kong. Located in a steep hill with a view over the city the team decided this was the perfect plays to examine the student life and explore what they have to offer a KTH-student.

HONG KONG UNIVERSITYFounded: 1911

Type: PublicMascot: LionBest ranking:

Worlds 7th best Employer Reputation,

Worlds 9th best civil and structural engineering

”The school which carries the motto wisdom and virtue is comprised of both engineering and medical faculties”

Destination: Hong Kong

INTERNATIONAL TALENT PROGRAM.

Every year H&M offer a 12 month long international trai-nee program in which they want to identify future leaders within the areas of Expansion and Global Sales. During the first two months the trainees are situated in Stock-holm and are then sent abroad for the remaining time of the program. If you are interested in an international ca-reer with placement abroad for at least 3 years and want to work with areas such as Lease Manager, Merchandise Manager, Expansion Controller etc. this is the program for you! For more information, please feel free to read more about the program at H&M’s webpage.

him, and he got the job as a Business Controller at H&M in Hong Kong. Since then Anders has stayed in Hong Kong and within H&M, today working as Head of Pur-chasing Controlling.

The H&M office in Hong Kong is the global hub for production as well as the place of the purchasing team for Monki, & Other Stories and Weekday. “Pro-duction is an inspiring place, you get close and hands on, you get to feel that you are a part of the real world.” The actual production units are spread all over the world depending on what types of collections that are being produced. Almost every manager at H&M works closely with a controller. A controller is used to inject more ana-lytical thinking in the otherwise so creative environment and is usually an engineer or economist.

Working with improving sustainability in different ways within the company is very important at H&M. For example, they measure their supplier factories’ sus-tainability performance with help of the index ICoC and the suppliers that are the most sustainable get rewarded. Another interesting aspect when looking at their annual sustainability report is what they see in the future of re-cycled cotton. When we ask what it is like to work and live in Hong Kong, Anders says that there are so many mixed natio-nalities both in Hong Kong and within the company. Even so, the company culture at H&M is very strong

and wherever you go in the world, an H&M office will never have communication problems. Also, the mix of cultures in Hong Kong creates an exciting fusion of dif-ferent worlds and is just amazing to live in. Unfortunate-ly, Anders said that the opportunity for a newly graduate to work within production at H&M has gone down since it quite recently was imposed a requirement of at least 2 years working experience to get a working visa in China. “However, if you are interested in working at H&M I re-commend to apply for a job as business controller. That is a good way of entering the company, and from there it is easy to grow and move within the company.”

H&M IN HONG KONG

24 Text: Amanda Enocksson, Photos: Sara Edin & Christopher Lindström

Anders Holm, a former KTH student within Indu-strial Engineering whom have been working at H&M for 6 years, meets us in the office lobby. After finishing his studies at KTH, he moved to China to study Chine-se since he did not know what he wanted to work with after graduation. When the language studies were done he decided to move back to Sweden and start working as a management consultant. After two years he figured that the consulting business was not the right area for

It is our fourth day on the trip and we are finally heading to our first company visit, H&M. To experience a Swedish company in Asia is very existing and we all think it will be interesting to see if the Swedish culture is infusing the com-pany over here in Hong Kong.

23

26 Text: Mattias Hallersbo, Photos: Sara Edin & Christopher Lindström

WALTER JENNING’S JOURNEY

Vice President Corporate CommunicationsHuawei Technologies

August 2015 – Present, Shenzhen, China

DirectorAsia Insight Circle

March 2015 – Present, Hong Kong

Senior AdvisorKreab Worldwide

November 2014 – June 2015, Hong Kong

Managing Partner, Greater ChinaKreab Gavin Anderson

December 2011 – November 2014, Hong Kong

SVP & Partner, GM - SydneyFleishman-Hillard

2009 – 2011

Founder & PartnerPerception Counsel Pty Ltd

2005 – 2009

Vice President, Global CommunicationsFord Motor Credit Company

1999 – 2004

CEOGavin Anderson & Company

1996 – 1999, Hong Kong

grasp the Huawei’s extensive impacts on the global tech-nology development. By having R&D departments all over the world, Huawei employees from all imaginable backgrounds and nationalities are now working on ma-king the network faster than human reflexes. You have probably already guessed the what, how and why; the implementation of 5G that will occur in 2020 and will, just to mention one example, speed up the development of driverless cars significantly. As our questions starts to concentrate more on the cul-ture at Huawei, Jennings passionately explains how the comapany’s founder Mr. Ren Zhengfei “gives the com-pany to its employees”. Huawei has managed to build a strong company culture built upon an unusually high level of openness, motivation and perhaps most importantly the idea that everyone is of equal importance indepen-dent of position. This enables employees to fully prosper within their interest, what it might be.

When the discussion turns towards the different pos-sibilities for students Jennings stresses that the amount areas in which you can contribute to the success of Hu-awei are immense. Jennings finishes with two valuable advices on how to make an international career within Huawei. Firstly, the best way as well as the most common way to start out is to take on an opportunity close to home in order to build a network that can then lead you to any of Huawei’s countries of operation. Secondly, a first job in Jennings own department, Public Affairs and Commu-nication, is an invaluable springboard for an international career since it is very easy to switch roles and dealing with international governments is part of the daily work. The time past by quickly during our encounter with Walter Jennings, in less than two hour the ten of us were amazed by the opportunities that lies within this compa-ny. As we walked out the doors of “The Center”, Jen-nings left us with a memorable quote; “the demand for Huawei products is infinite”.

25Destination: Hong Kong

HUAWEI IN HONG KONG

Huawei holds a significant part of the city of Shenzhen as their HQ, opera-tes in 170 countries and offers a com-pany culture in which the employees experiences neither a western or a eastern culture but the uniqueness of what can be found between these worlds. Consequently, it was with high expectations that we visited Huawei and Walter Jennings, Vice President of Corporate Communications. We were not disappointed, even though our meeting took place in central Hong Kong instead of in Shenzhen.

Jennings welcomes us into the fifth tallest skyscraper in Hong Kong, “The Center”, situated in the Financi-al District. In accordance with the custom we devote a moment to the procedure of exchanging business cards. However, it was with immediate regret that we realize that we have not brought any and hence Jennings expla-ins for us that you should always bring a business card when in Hong Kong or China (even if you are a student) in order to fully engage in process of both showing and gaining respect. The beginning of the encounter conti-nues with us presenting ourselves as well as our interest in what students from various educational backgrounds can expect when applying for a position at Huawei. Jen-nings has by now already set a mood that promises in-spiration and a truly interesting meeting and so we begin to emerge in the world of Huawei.Being not only the largest telecommunications com-pany in China but also a private company, Huawei is well respected globally. Jennings further explains the successes and development has been made possible through their strength in connecting networks in the most remote areas through new and robust technolo-gies. When the company went overseas in 2000 it was then the developing markets that was, and has remained, to be their focus. As Jennings continues we start to fully

San Francisco

After being sleep deprived from an almost 24 hours journey from door to door we finally arrive at Mineta San José International Airport. With an almost 2 hours journey left to our hotel we unluckily missed our train with just some seconds, leaving us to wait for an hour for the next train. With the sun heating up in the calm-ness of Santa Clara, we laid back and tried to antici-pate what lays ahead in San Fransisco. Apart from the amazing views from the top of San Francisco’s hills, we are about to experience its exquisite cuisine from anywhere in the world, diverse culture and its scenic beauty. When we finally arrive in San Francisco we can-not wait to drop our bags off back at the hotel and explore the beautiful hilly city. Like no other place can you find both one of the steepest hills and one of the most crooked street in the world and not to forget about their cable cars and the famous Golden Gate bridge. We are about to experience a diverse environ-ment with its free spirited people and the city’s plain out wackiness giving the city an eccentric charm.

Text: Melissa Burt, Photo: Sara Edin2827Destination: San Francisco

UNION SQUAREWhen we first arrived at our hotel in Union square we were amazed by how central we were staying. Our hotel was situated at the heart of Union Square and this couldn’t be any better. We were close to shops and restaurants with a food store open 24 hours straight across the street. We managed to walk around a lot gi-ving us good exercise up and down San Fran-cisco’s steep hills. If you ever plan a trip to San Francisco, Union Square is the place to stay giving more time to do other things during the day and shop anytime when you are back at the hotel.

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGEWhat can we say, being one of the most re-cognized tourist attractions in the world we understand why. The amount of times this bridge has been in movies is a lot and we made sure to catch a glimpse of the bridge from all possible angles.

Destination: San Francisco

MUIR WOODSCome here a sunny but a little cloudy day to get amazing pictures of how the sun reflects between the trees. You find yourself in a story-land with its 250 feet tall trees being more than from 400 to 800 years old. We made the mis-take of being there when it was packed with visitors so make sure to go either early or late during the day to avoid crowds and find your-self in a peaceful stillness among huge trees.

ALCATRAZ ISLANDAlcatraz Island is lookaded a short boat ride away from the mainland and is, apart from once being one of America’s top-security pri-son also known from the movie “The Rock” and for its most dangerous inmates such as “Birdman of Alcatraz” and Al Capone the American gangster also known as “Scarface”. From having some of the most dangerous in-mates locked up to being occupied by a group of aboriginal activists, the island is today open for tours having more than 1.3 million visitors yearly visit the grounds. These same grounds that once prisoners used to walk every day to get to the industries area where they got just a few minutes a day to get a glimpse of the be-autiful city laying right across reminding them of the free world outside. They say if you lis-ten hard enough you could hear laughter of women from the city bouncing off the waves reaching the convicts ears. This is an outing you should absolutely not miss. Make a visit and hear more about one of the greatest pri-son escapes in history. This was definitely one of our top things to do in San Francisco.

Text: Melissa Burt, Photos: Sara Edin & Christopher Lindström3029

31 32 Text: Melissa Burt & Christopher Lindström, Photos: Sara Edin & Christopher LindströmDestination: San Francisco

We took an amazing stroll thtough Fisherman’s wharf grabbing a coffee on the way and stopped for a brunch. Fisherman’s Wharf is a must see when visiting San Fran-cisco, the seaside street is crammed with restaurants, diners and shops. In the area there are a lot of things to do, to mention a few you can go to the local zoo and an aquarium. You can also stroll through the bustling street and enjoy the view and the parks, there is something for everyone.

FISHERMEN’S WARF

Napa valley is a world famous wine growing region located north of San Francisco. We took a detour by one of the wineries one day and was very happy we did. We got to taste some local wines and sit in the sun by the vineyard. All of us agree fully that this is one of the best detours ever, if you are in San francisco some day in the future - do not miss a trip to Napa valley!

NAPA VALLEY

Highway 1 is a must if you want to experience the beauty of the californian nature. Stretching from Los Angeles in the south to San Francisco in the north, highway 1 is the perfect road to take if you want to see everything California has to offer. On one side you have the sea, on the other you have mainland california with its diverse nature ranging from deserts to forests and cliffs. One place you absolutely don’t want to miss when traveling along highway 1 is Santa Cruz, a scenic small town located on the shore of the pacific ocean. With its iconic amusement park and famous Pier, you can’t find a better place to spend a few hours on your trip.

HIGHWAY 1

Sidinformation 33

Stanford University can be found right in the heart of Silicon Valley, situated between San José and San Francisco. Stanford was established in 1885 and has become one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Among its alumni faculty members there are 16 Nobel Prize winners and famous names such as Goog-le founders Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Tiger Woods.

As we drive into the campus area, we quick-ly understand that Stanford University campus is something like a city of its own. A beautiful and endlessly big campus filled with restaurants, shops, activity centres and most importantly - some of the brightest young minds in the world.

Shortly after our arrival, we meet Anders Petersson and Ossian O’Reilly at the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering centre, named after the St-anford-alumni and founder of the tech com-pany NVIDA. Anders Petersson is a former consulting professor at Stanford, with both a master’s degree and a PhD in numerical ana-lysis from KTH. Ossian has previously stu-died at Uppsala University and he is currently a Stanford student pursuing his PhD degree within Geophysics.

We are lead into a presentation room and we start of our visit by listening to Anders’s presentation of his most recent research work within seismology, which simply put is the sci-entific study of earthquakes. During the past years Anders has been developing a parallel simulation code for seismic wave propagation that can be used to calculate realistic ground motions due to earthquakes. This is an espe-cially relevant research area in California as earthquakes could be lurking around the cor-ner at any point of time. Therefore it is im-portant to conduct predictive studies in order to enable proactive measures and mitigating damage in high-risk areas, says Anders.

After Anders’s presentation, Ossian takes on by telling us about his academic background and of course we also eagerly take the opportunity to ask him all about what it is like to be a student at Stanford. Ossian tells us he got his PhD student position through the merits and connections he acquired while he conducted his master thesis project at Stanford. Therefore, he highly recom-mends the same path for students interested in pursuing an academic career at Stanford. Having discussed the academic part of Ossian’s time at Stanford, we then went over to discuss other parts of campus life. Ossian currently lives on campus and tells us he especially enjoys the clo-seness to work and more importantly the driven and innovative atmosphere on campus.

After meeting with Anders and Ossian, we take a tour around the campus and visit the big university shop full of books and souvenirs, with everything from cups and t-shirts to sportswear carrying the Stanford logo. Later we have lunch at the big food court on campus, filled with different restaurants where you can find something for any taste.

Besides world-class education, Stan-ford University has a lot to offer its students whether their interest lies within sports, arts or culture and for those interested, there are more than 650 student organizations to join. While strolling through campus, one comes to think of all the great minds that have spent parts of their lives at this very place and the historical imprints it bears. We truly can’t imagine a student that would not enjoy being a student at this campus.

34 Text: Tommy Lundqvist, Photos: Sara Edin

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Student enrolment6 994 undergraduates

9 128 graduates

Campus97 % of undergraduates

live on campus700 major buildings

Research5 300 externally

sponsored projects$1.33 billion total budget

SchoolsBusiness, Earth SciencesEducation, Engineering

Humanities and Sciences, Law, Medicine

”Stanford university campus is something like a city of its own”

Destination: San Francisco 33

36 Text: Emanuel Onoszko, Photo: Christopher Lindström

The worlds most activeseed accelerator from the

heart of San Francisco

Carl Fritjofsson initiates our visit by showing around the office and all passionate young entrepreneurs. Carl comes originally from Sweden where he studied economics at Uppsala university and graduated in 2005. He always wanted to move abroad and pursue an international career, why he started working as a management consultant at Bearing Point. After one year at the Stockholm office Carl got the opportunity to do one year in Riga fol-lowed by one and a half years in New York. Quite soon Carl grew tired of working in a big organisation with all that comes and decided to move back to Sweden and start AdProfit, his first start-up.

About a year ago Carl started working as an investor for 500 Startups in San Francis-co, as venture capitalists the company invests around $ 120 000 in exchange for 5% of the company’s shares. The business is structured on offering four different acceleration pro-grams every year. Each program holds 50 startups and are supported by ten experiences entrepreneurs and ten distribution experts. As one of the experienced entrepreneurs, Carl speaks passionate about the enormous current investments in tech companies specified in software development and highlights the great opportunities these companies experience at the moment. The huge potential opportunities given out there by accelerators and incubators (like 500 Startups) are although enlighten by the fact that around 50% of the start ups in-cluded in the acceleration programs end up bankrupt after a year.

As inspiring and passionate as Carl was, a lot of questions from the group where raised about his background and career. After run-ning AdProfit a couple of years, Carl stumbled across Creandum, a company with the perfect combination of consulting and small busi-ness-feeling. Together with five newly found friends at Creandum Carl started Wrapp, a consumer application with the purpose of gi-ving gift-cards to friends. A couple of years later, with investors like Niklas Zennström (founder of Skype) and other prestigious in-vestors from Silicon Valley, Rocket Internet pushes Wrapp into pivoting the business mo-del. By then Carl choosed to stay in San Fran-cisco and with all his experience, starts at 500 Startups combined with part time work at Cre-andum.

It is understandable to fall in love with wor-king in a start-up enviroment, especially here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, considering it is one of the greatest tech-hub’s in the world. To Carl there are a couple of key factors what makes this part of the world superior:• Extremely free working culture, eve-

rything within the start-up community is passion driven

• Success breeds success

To wrapp (pun intended) this up, the most valuable advice of how to become a Venture capitalist is to go your own way, although the need of operational experience before starting your own company is crucial.

From within the walls of 500 Startups you can literarily feel the hearth beat of the entrepreneurial spirit pulsing from the centre of San Francisco throughout the whole world. As one of the biggest early-stage venture funds, start ups from all over the world can get the exclusive opportunity to get expertise help and support from top experienced entrepreneurs. We got the opportunity to meet one of them, Carl Fritjofsson.

35Destination: San Francisco

38 Text: Tommy Lundqvist, Photo: Christopher Lindström

A visit at the social network

At Hackerway 1 in the Silicon Valley, you find the smaller city that is Face-books headquarters. The project group had to single out three members who got a private touring of the facilities and a look into the life of a for-mer KTH student, working as a software engineer at Facebook.

37Destination: San Francisco

With over 1.5 billion users’ worldwide and over 12 000 employees with most of them posted in Silicon Valley the Headquarters of Facebook has grown to a city on its own. After entering the premises you can walk along an outdoor boulevard that passes through the co-ding facilities. Having their own bank, doctors and dental offices, hairdressers, restaurants and cafes, with everything free of charge, it’s hard to imagine people rushing home from work. As we meet up Emil Hesslow, former KTH student and now optimizing server drift as a software engineer, he adds that they do have to pay in one of the restaurants, as it serves alcohol. Other than that, they come when they want, and leave when they feel like it, and he feels quite content with his life over in the US. Emil started out designing a website for Webhallen together with his brother in Varberg, he then moved to Stockholm and KTH, and shortly after graduating he was approached by Facebook. As it turned out, one of his old col-leagues had given Facebook his entire address book of coders he knew back in Sweden. Ac-cepting the phone interview as for fun, he was then flown out to the headquarters. Two inter-views about coding, one about personality and another one about systems design he was then good to go and thrown into projects.

After the initial scare of working beside people from Stanford and MIT Emil soon re-alised how not only did he pass the bar, Face-book wants to hire 10 000 people more like him. As he explained, Facebook needs more people, it’s just the matter of finding people

with the talent for coding. Updating a site with 1.5 billion users three times a day, providing almost every other person who enters the site with a unique layout, requires a lot of resour-ces. Facebook is far more beyond personal profiles and news feed, performing millions of incremental tests, barely noticeable, Facebook measures everything to find out what works and what don’t. Relax, this does not mean that they measure how often you visit your crushs profile, and all “tests” posted saying you can find you nr 1 follower is bogus. As Emil con-tinues to explain, Facebook need software en-gineers, the problem is that a good coder can be a thousand times more effective than a bad one, and sometimes endlessly better as the job might not even be possible without him. With that said, he encourages everyone with a passion for computers and problem solving to take the chance at Facebook. Having a very laid back atmosphere you can see people working on their computers through every door, or just browsing facebook… It’s hard to tell. At one place a garage door has been opened, allowing for an almost outdoor office. Mark Zuckerberg has the exact same office as everyone else here, and his all glass meeting room just behind it. Every Friday Mark comes down to the coffee shop and has a Q&A with the employees. He does not want 12000 ques-tions each time, so the employees can post and vote for questions to be answered in a poll. The top ranked questioners are allowed to ask their questions about issues or company strategies to the CEO himself.

40 Text: Axel Ingo, Photo: Sara Edin

The sun is shining and the excitement is buil-ding. We are heading to NASA! Christopher is jumping up and down like a three year old on Christmas Eve. “- It’s a childhood dream to go to NASA! Hope that we at least can take a picture around a logo somewhere.” I remem-ber he said. That was a slight concern. We had no idea how much we would be allowed to see and document. The visit had been planned for months! Emails back and forth, visit registra-

tion forms, copies of passport and visa etc.. What expectations would you have on a vi-

sit to a NASA facility? Ours were pessimistic to say the least; very restricted access, escort by se-curity everywhere and no photography anywhe-re. It turned out to be the complete opposite!

We were welcomed by Bill, an Export Con-trol Officer and the supervisor of the interna-tional interns, and Alexander, a KTH-student who you can read about on the next page. The

visitor registration was made in an expected NASA-visit-way. Passport check, another written form confirming our identity and a photo. But then, the whole experience turned around. Bill had arranged special permission for us to dri-ve our own cars on site. He was still escorting us around, but we weren’t required a NASA employee inside the car as regulation says. He an-nounced the second surprise shortly thereafter: “- You are allowed to take picture of everything you see and publish it”. Our jaws dropped.

Before entering the conference room some forty five minutes after our arrival, Bill had taken us around the base showing us more than ever could have wished for. We got to hear about the history of the site and anecdotes about the reti-rement fly-by of the space shuttle Endeavour outside the main building. We stopped by the Roverscape area, a robotics test area for future Mars vehicles. We drove by the world's largest wind tunnel and on a parking lot, there was an old ICBM Titan II rocket bathing in the sun.

But what is NASA Ames Research Center specifically used for?NASA Ames Research Center was instituted in 1939 by NASA predecessor NACA as the second lab facility in the nation. It is currently operated by ~2500 people and has a US$950M budget for research and mission control within areas such as aeronautics, exploration, science and small satel-lites. Many of the current projects has its roots in three questions asked 20 years ago: How does life begin?, Does life exist elsewhere? and What is life’s future on earth?. Recent successful missions include the LCROSS, which found water on the south pole of the moon, and the Kepler teles-cope, which has found more than 1000 earth-si-zed planets in the goldilock zone since 2009 and thus have potential for life. If space is everything

you see in your field of view, then the Kepler has found all these planets when only looking at an area of the sky as big as a stretched out hand in front of you. In other words, there is an unbelie-vable number of habitable planets out there!

Questions were asked, many with a specific topic: Mars. Bill answered all questions with an example of what NASA Ames had contributed with. Remember the Mars Exploration Vehicles named Spirit and Opportunity? Ames Research facility conducted tests of the parachutes that slowed the vehicles down at the entry into the Martian atmosphere. Initial results confirm that the first design of the parachutes would have fai-led, which would and resulted in a US$2.7 billion crash into the Martian surface. A current project with connections to the next Mars vehicle, set to launch in 2020, is the Mars Scout Helicopter. It is a GoPro equipped helicopter that flies around during the day taking pictures the the ground. A software then creates a 3D-map of the surroun-ding. This is to help the actual Mars vehicle to tra-vel around and knowing what is around it.

After a great hour in the conference room, Bill took us out for a final stop: a hangar with ex-perimental Blackhawk helicopters. When entering the wars in early 21st century, the helicopter pilots got blinded by the sand around them. This initia-ted a cooperative research between the US Army and NASA Ames to come up with solutions to help the pilots land on sandy ground.

A great day had unfortunately come to an end as we had to hurry on to the next visit and Sam-sung. It was a bit sad, as the quality of the visit and insight we got was completely overwhelming. Through the whole trip, I personally rank our visit to NASA Ames as one of the best we did we re-garding how much it exceeded our expectations!

39Destination: San Francisco

NASA Ames Research Center - The visit we didn’t expect.

Imagine waking up way too early, skipping breakfast and picking up two oversized rental cars. Then, you try to navigate your way out of San Francisco City with a GPS that only gets a signal once every third block. Finally, after seemingly driving around in circles, almost missing red lights, you are out on freeway 101, heading south towards Mountain View in the heart of Silicon Valley! That is exactly our story of the early hours of Tuesday April 5th!

Text: Axel Ingo, Photo: Sara Edin4241Destination: San Francisco

Write your Master thesis for NASA in Silicon Valley

A key individual for securing our exclusive visit to NASA Ames Research Center was Alexander Farnese Grima. Alexander is a fellow aerospace master student at KTH and friends with Project Manager Axel, and he is currently is doing his master thesis work through the NASA Interna-tional Internship Program. We had the chance to sit down with him and ask about how he got here, what he is doing and his experiences from the time in California.

That all sounds amazing, but what are you actually

working with for your master thesis?

“The goal of my work here is to give Elytron, a private aircraft manufacturer specialized in vertical take-off and landing airplanes, an idea of how an aircraft will behave once they start the test flights. The aircraft in question is an experimental tilt-wing plane. To do this, a model of the aircraft is to be generated in an in-house develo-ped software. However, the software needs data to work properly. So I have create a database of the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft through several software I had never used before. The actual thesis work that I have done is the analysis of the aircraft performance.”

But how did you get here? What’s your background and how did you apply?

“From the beginning, it was the space track of the ae-rospace master that made me apply to KTH. I moved to Stockholm and started the vehicle engineering pro-gram in 2011. I really enjoyed myself and the student life during my bachelor. I was engaged in the chapter and was head of the reception of the new students in 2013. When I began my masters, I decided that I really wanted to study hard, absorb all possible knowledge and get good grades. Then, in October of the same year, I applied for and got selected to the small multinational SLED REXUS project team (Google it! It’s a super cool student rocket project over 18 months). We worked in-tensively on the project and got to travel a lot. About a

year ago (spring of 2015) I got an email from Christer Fuglesang, the head of the aerospace master program, with the information that the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB) had established an internship program with NASA. I applied in early May and basically didn’t hear anything for months. Suddenly, in October of 2015, I was informed that I had been selected to the program. I still have no idea how I got selected. I have average grades, but perhaps it was my participation in the REX-US-project combined with the design of a multirotor-craft that I did for my bachelor thesis.”

So what are your best advices when working and living in the USA in general, and Silicon Valley specifically? “Its tough to come up with any specific advices since I live by the philosophy that everything will be solved. But living in the USA, or at least in California, you need a car. Everybody I know has a car because they need one. Un-fortunately, traffic can sometimes be bad. A colleague of mine drove 10 km to San Jose in 1,5 hours the other day. If we look at Silicon Valley specifically, networking is a really big deal here. There are a lot of events specially cre-ated for people to network. That’s also how you get a job. If people like you, they will find a way to get you into their company. Swedes in general are bad at networking. It’s easy to stay in a corner together with your friends instead of meeting new people. All americans aren’t good either, but some are really good at it! KTH should have more events where you learn how to network.”

I remember I met Alexander in a hallway on KTH campus back in October. He looked happy. “I just got confirmation that I will do my master thesis at NASA Ames in Mountain View, Silicon Valley” he said. I was stunned. “What a fantastic opportunity to finalise your studies in an environment like that! I want to do that!” I thought.

Months passed. In early January, Alexander and two other Swedes flew over to San Francisco to start their internship period. Soon thereafter, pictures of them and their team attending rocket launches started to appear on Facebook. “Do you remember the first SpaceX rocket that landed on the droneship, but whe-re the landing gear collapsed? We were at Vandenberg AFB and watched that launch. And that was about a week after we arrived. It was great teambuilding, but the weather wasn’t that good. About a month later, we at-tended another launch, at night this time. The weather was clear and there was no lights anywhere. The sky was filled with stars and you could see all the shooting stars. Suddenly the whole horizon lit up. Soon thereaf-ter, the enormous roar from the engines hit us. As it was so clear, we could see the rocket all the way into space when it turned its engine off.”

Sidinformation 43 44 Text: Tommy Lundqvist, Photo: Sara EdinDestination: San Francisco 43

Samsung, or Three stars as their named in Korean are usually associated with their products in the electro-nics area. They are however one of the worlds biggest companies with areas for all KTH departments. Project Destination took a sneak peak at their headquarters in Silicon Valley to test their newest products in virtual reality and see what they are up to next.

2016 Summer Ph.D Internship Opportunities

Be the Next Big Thing

Samsung Research America is offering positions as Ph.D in-terns. Working on Samsung’s

real core projects that drive the most critical innovation

for their future products and work alongside world renow-ned researchers and industry

thought leaders.

From noodle-makin’ to world domination After a quick journey over from Nasa’s headquarter the

project team arrived at one of Samsungs 4 campuses in the Silicon Valley, the SRA, Samsung Research America. Blake Malcolm, a Employee Services Specialist from HR greeted us at the entrance and welcomed us in to shade us from the all year round blistering sun of California. The first thing on the agenda was a visit to the food court were some of the best company food I have ever seen was served. As it was a Thursday they had brought in a team of sushi chefs who prepared meals along the wall. During the lunch Blake did mention that employees did still have to pay 2-3$ though for the lunch.

As the presentation commenced we were joined by Bruno, Blakes german shepherd, who accompanies him most of his workdays. The company encourages the employees to bring their dogs to work, and emphasizes a relaxed and open work environment at the research department. Taking the seats of one of the bigger bo-ardrooms the group learned about Samsungs history. Starting out as a trading company in 1938 selling nood-les and continuing to expanding into sugar, wool, insu-rance, retail and electronics. They also further expanded into the military and medicinal research and into the construction business. They have their own clothing line and have constructed buildings such as the Burj Khalifa and the Petronas towers.

During the presentation the group was joined by four different engineers within the SRA, or Samsung Re-search America. As technology advances Samsung aims to be in the forefront and spent 14 billion dollars on Re-search and Development in 2014. The engineers at SRA were of the firm belief that VR, Virtual Reality is whe-re the future is heading. Together with some Gear VR powered by Oculus, the project team was allowed to test some of their products under development. Controlling the virtual reality with a controller, wand or even a smart watch were some of the functions. The VR also allows

for new experiences to be had, as Samsung believes in placing 360 degree cameras at different places, mountain tops, air balloons, rain forests, football games and other sporting events that will give the user the experience of being there. This is what the engineers work with during the days, testing and developing new controls and new interfaces, coming with new groundbreaking ideas.

“Samsung screams for new talent and developers or graphical designers are more than welcome at the SRA.”

The presentation continued into other fields. As a new generation dependent on computer development is raised, the engineers worked on ways to include coding in new toys. Allowing for the kids to play and in a fun way learn how different combination of letters or blocks can make toys move in certain patterns. No matter what area you are interested in working in, Samsung surely has it. Blake proudly displayed his new Samsung watch and also told us about the technology behind Samsung’s new payment service. How everyone with a Samsung phone can connect it to his or hers bank account and hold it up to a register. They also have huge projects going on in connecting house appliances or cars to phones. How you now can open the trunk to your car over the internet, allowing for smooth trades from for example ebay or amazon while being in a completely different location, by simply unlocking the trunk letting them leave the pro-ducts safely in the car.

Upon leaving Blake, Bruno and Samsung, the entire team was amazed at how diverse and massive this com-pany really is. With opportunities within almost every field Samsung is one of the top contenders to work for. Should one be interested in working in the Silicon Val-ley, Samsung offers relocation assistance with everything from visa to accommodation

46 Text: Sara Edin, Photos: Sara Edin & Christopher Lindström

Ilaria Brunelli greets us in the entran-ce and we follow her into a modern room where they display some of their current R&D-projects. She is a engi-neering manager at the Ericsson expe-rience center here in Silicon Valley and has been since 2013. We start by in-troducing ourselves and the different areas we study. She finds it interesting that we have different backgrounds and tell us that Ericsson is so big that they always need people from diffe-rent educations and highlights the fact that it is important with diversity. That is understandable since the company employs around 110,000 people.

Ericsson’s Silicon Valley headquar-ters lays in San Jose, a short drive from San Francisco. Ericsson is a na-tural part of the leading innovation centre in the world even though they are over 140 years old. We had the great opportunity to visit their Experience Center during one hour and learn how this Sweden-born glo-bal company works with innovation.

A 140 year old start up in the middle of Silicon Valley

Ilaria presents some of their current R&D-work, inclu-ding opportunities and future problems with the connec-ted car. She describes how they work with prototyping and shows us a lego-prototype that they use for a user case where a delivery man drops of a package in the customer's car, without the customer being present. In addition to the lego-car they use an electronic switch, some backend and the connecting service IFTTT (If This Then That). This way of prototyping is fast and easy to adapt for different situations. This is only one example she presented for us and we get the impression that Ericsson put a lot of re-courses in innovation.

The office in Silicon Valley is not Ericsson’s main headquarter. It is in fact located in Kista, Sweden, where the company initially was born in 1876. Ilaria tells us that it is noticeable even in Silicon Valley since there are a lot of Swedes working at the office. Ericsson is present in 180 countries and, for those who do not have a world map laying around, that is in fact nearly the entire world. Erics-son is a good place to start if you want to work abroad in the future. “Once you’re in the company, it is really easy to be repositioned anywhere in the world”, Ilaria says and advice us to start with an employment in Sweden or look up their global graduate trainee program.

But what does Ericsson actually do?

A common misunderstanding is that Ericsson is a big pro-ducer of hardware, but that is not the case. Ericsson pro-duce software and offers services and infrastructure for information and communications technology. “Ericsson basically does everything that is between phones”, Ilaria says. Ericsson’s vision is “the networked society” where everyone and everything that benefits from a connection is connected.

This “140 year old startup” sure is an exciting company. We are really curious about what internet of things and 5G will bring in the future. As Swedes, we were even a bit proud when leaving the office with the knowledge that Ericsson probably will have something to do with bring-ing that future technology into the world.

THE GLOBAL GRADUATE TRAINEE PROGRAM.

Ericsson offers two 18-months long trainee programs that will begin in the autumn of 2017. The Excellerate Global Leadership Program is customized for students with a master’s degree in either business, marketing or economics and is an opportunity to engage with commercial project at a strategic and global level. The Innovate Graduate Program focuses on technology le-adership and is suited for students who has a master’s degree in engineering, computer science, information technology or relevant field. If you are interested (who isn’t?!) please feel free to read more about the early career programs at Ericsson’s webpage.

ILLARIA’S JOURNEY.

Engineering Manager, Head of Ericsson Experience Center of Silicon Valley

April 2013 – Present

Solution Designer, Head of Ericsson Experience Center, Silicon Valley

January 2011 – March 2013

R&D Global Graduate TraineeAugust 2008 – December 2010

Milan Area, ItalyPolitecnico di Milano

Graduated 2007 MSc, Telecommunication Engineering

45Destination: San Francisco

Text: Rebecca Axelsson, Photos: Sara Edin

”Let me

To our surprise, we are not the only tourists visiting Google. The Google HQ is almost as popular tourist attraction as the Golden Gate Bridge and therefore, they had to build a tourist center to avoid that tourists distracts the employees while working at the campus. We were supposed to see only the tourist center but Jared also gave us an exclusive tour around the main campus, where tourists actually were not allowed.

As he showed us around the campus he answered our many (!) curious questions about things we heard about Google. For instance, we talked about Google’s famous management philosophies called “20 % time”, which means that the employees gets 20 % of their time to spend on own ideas they think will benefit Google. The reputation about “20 % time” is that it does not exist but he told us that it does, only that not everyone is using it. Jared is not only a Software Engineer, he is also a re-ally good storyteller and he told us about when they re-corded the movie “The Internship” and the star actors Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson could not enter Goog-le buildings without a visitor badge and escort although they were stars of the movie. This of course complica-ted the recording of the movie.

The Googleplex was like a subsistence world with restaurants, gym and lot of other things you do not expect to see in an office . As we moved on to the courtyard, the-re was a statue of a big dinosaur which Jared told us stand for the fact that “we should not be stuck in old patterns of thinking. Or maybe... it does not mean anything.“

47Destination: San Francisco

Project Destination got the opportunity to meet Google during the stay in San Francisco. When entering Google-plex their culture of creativity, innovation and knowled-ge immediately reflected the environment; eight seated Google bicycles, infinity pools, high tech self-driving cars and Google glasses. It was with high expectations we visited Google and due to the warm welcome from Jared Oberhaus, Senior Software Engineer at Google, I can tell you that we were not disappointed.

it for you”

WANT TO BE A NOOGLER?

Check out Google’s career sitewww.google.com/about/careers/students

WHO IS JARED?

Jared Oberhaus, Senior Software Engineer at GoogleHe has worked with projects like: SRE, Geo, Google[x] Glass and Skybox

48

HKG - SFO - ARN50HKG - SFO - ARN49

HKG SFOARN

51 52 What is your Destination?What is your Destination?

This trip has been an amazing experience. To visit companies in two different parts of the

world have broaden our perspectives and it is really hard to summarize our experiences.

Both Hong Kong and San Francisco are two great cities with loads of opportunities for us as

KTH-students.

We hope you have found some inspiration in pursuing an international career in the future

after reading this magazine. That is really what this is all about.

WHAT

IS

YOUR

DESTINATION?

APPLY!5453APPLY!

You now have the opportunity to join this unique international project at KTH.

During one year, you will get experience from business relations, event creation and marke-

ting. You will grow and have huge personal development. On top of that, you get a 15 credit course and the chance to visit the companies of your dreams during a 14+ day

study trip at the end of the year.

Sounds exciting? Apply before May 25th for Project Manager

and May 31th for all other roles.

To apply, send your CV/Resume and a Cover Letter of maximum 250 words describing

yourself and why you want to be a part of the Project Destination team, to apply@projectdestination.se.

Visist projectdestination.se to read more about the roles.

ThanksOur main partner Atlas Copco

Schibsted Media Group, CAE Value, ELU, Kinnarps, Spotify, Lifesum, EY, Erasteel, SAAB, Sound Industries

H&M, The University of Hong Kong, Huawei, Stanford University, 500 Startups, Facebook, NASA Reasearch Center, Samsung, Ericsson, Google

Carl-Axel EngdahlProject Destination 2014/2015

All participating students who have made this year unforgettable.

Thank you. All of you. Project Destination would be impossible without you.

2015-2016