CEC Alumni

First job after graduation brings engineering alum back to George Mason

Colleen Rich — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 19:42:42 +0000

First job after graduation brings engineering alum back to George Mason Colleen Rich Wed, 06/05/2024 - 15:42

From an early age, ��AV alumnus Eduardo Vazquez appeared destined to work on big construction projects. His father, who relocated their family here from Mexico in 2001, has for years built Inova Health Systems facilities and frequently tinkered around the house with his son at his side. They even built a backyard shed together, from the foundation up.

George Mason alum Eduardo Vazquez (left) with coworker Nam Ngo, also an engineering alum, at the groundbreaking of the new Activities Community Wellness Building. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Vazquez, who graduated in May with a civil engineering degree from George Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing, was back on campus this week wearing a different hat—a hard hat. He landed a job as project engineer with Hoar Construction prior to Commencement and was with his new employer as they broke ground on George Mason’s new Activities Community Wellness Building on the Fairfax Campus.

The 25,000-square-foot concrete and tension fabric structure, to be located behind the Recreation Athletic Complex, will be built by Hoar Construction in partnership with Powers Brown Architecture and civil engineer IMEG Corp. and is scheduled for completion in 2025.

Vazquez planned to attend Mason from the time he entered the university’s Early Identification Program, a partnership with area public schools to help prepare middle and high school students who will be the first in their families to attend college. As part of EIP, Vazquez received a full-ride scholarship to George Mason and enrolled in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, where he studied for a brief time before transferring to engineering.

Vazquez attended George Mason under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, a status that left him unable to receive public financial aid. The decision to switch majors and give up his scholarship was significant for him in that it meant he would have to fund his education, something he determined was a worthwhile price for pursuing his passion.

That decision paid off. Vazquez was attending his first-ever career fair in Dewberry Hall and wandered to the very back of the room, where he saw the Hoar Construction booth just as he was ready to leave.

“I’m pretty knowledgeable about the contractors around here because of my dad’s work, and I’d never heard of them but stopped anyway,” he said. “The vice president was there, which is something you don’t get with the bigger companies. I got along with them right off the bat and left my resume.”

He interned at Hoar in the summer of 2023 and made a good enough impression to get a job offer. It didn’t hurt that the company was hoping to secure a contract with the university.

“At one point they asked me if I had a picture I could give them,” he said. “They said they were bidding on a project for Mason. It was their first [Mason] project, and they wanted to make sure Mason knew they had one of their students on the team.”

Vazquez is excited to work on the project. He said it will be George Mason’s first tensile-fabric structure built. He imagines bringing his own children to campus someday and being able to point to the structure and say, “I helped build that.”

It will be a lasting legacy…one started by his immigrant father putting up drywall day after day so his children could enjoy the American dream.

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Topics

Alumni

College of Engineering and Computing

Early Identification Program (EIP)

Students

CEC Alumni

Taking a byte out of Apple

Martha Bushong — Thu, 09 May 2024 11:36:28 +0000

Taking a byte out of Apple Martha Bushong Thu, 05/09/2024 - 07:36

A 2020 graduate of George Mason’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Iranian-born Farnoud Farahmand works for tech giant Apple in Silicon Valley doing a job he hadn’t thought about as an undergrad or even a grad student. Farahmand’s journey to California covered more miles than an American pioneer’s and his attitude mirrored the same qualities of curiosity, grit, and determination as those of Western settlers.

Farnoud Farahmand works on site at Apple in Silicon Valley three days a week.
Photo provided.

Farahmand said he chose Mason because he had family living in Virginia and found George Mason a good match for his goals, and his interest in digital design and embedded systems. “Mason had a good program. I saw there were some specializations in digital design and that was a great fit for me,” he said. Farahmand credits his PhD advisor, Professor Krzysztof (Kris) Gaj for teaching him the value of teamwork and nurturing his burgeoning curiosity.

“What I learned from Dr. Gaj was to be dedicated, do the hard work, and keep learning different topics. We used to have very long weekly meetings with him instead of meeting with each of his students in separately, he pulled us all together in one room at the same time,” said Farahmand. Sitting in long meetings with labmates, he learned about related topics and said that experience led him to his internships with Google.

Before the internship, Farahmand was focused on hardware implementation, but other people were working on side-channel analysis, and applied to Google online. “The thing is you don't know the positions. The job descriptions are very general when you apply for internships at Google. “The internship was mostly related to side-channel analysis but because I was in those meetings with Dr. Gaj and others for 2-3 years, I learned all these topics and then when I went for an interview when they asked all these questions, I was ready to answer.”

Farahmand’s advises current students to stay curious and don’t be afraid to learn about a different topic; take every chance you can to learn something new and different. “If I wanted to just focus on what I worked on from the beginning, which was doing digital design and implementing ciphers in hardware, then I maybe I wouldn’t have had the confidence for my internship interviews,” he said.

Farahmand thought that after interning successfully at Google he would be a good fit and applied for a job. Covid’s trajectory and downturn in the tech industry caused a detour that led him elsewhere. When he interviewed for a permanent position with Google, he said everything went well but at the height of the pandemic, the company wasn’t hiring. While he waited for Google’s hiring freeze to thaw, Apple came through with an offer.

That detour, and Farahmand’s new job, led to an opportunity in still another topic. The new job deals with modeling power based on the features that will be added in future generations of Apple electronics.

Farahmand had never worked on power optimization in his research but through his internship experience with side-channel analysis, its relationship to evaluating the power consumption of a chip, and power analysis and simulations, the hiring committee made the connection and offered him the position.

“It was a very good fit for the position and now that I’m working on it. I really like it. One thing that I see from students and for myself as well, we know very famous topics like digital design, verification, and physical design. These are very well-known positions, but sometimes there are available positions in good companies. We don't search for them, so we don't find them.” By keeping his options open, and looking for jobs in unexpected areas Farahmand discovered an unexpected path to success.

Topics

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

alumni

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program

CEC Alumni

Pitch Perfect: Entrepreneur hopes to change lives and inspire others

Colleen Rich — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 14:15:51 +0000

Pitch Perfect: Entrepreneur hopes to change lives and inspire others Colleen Rich Wed, 03/13/2024 - 10:15

When Shrishti Singh came to ��AV for her doctoral studies, she had a goal in mind: developing a new technology that would allow the visualization of cancer in deep tissue and perhaps enable earlier diagnoses.

Using a combination of FDA-approved dyes for photoacoustic imaging, Singh created an injectable contrast agent that attaches to tumor cells and increases the visibility of those cells against the background tissue.

Singh completed her PhD in bioengineering in 2022, but her relationship with the university continues. During her time at Mason, Singh has used all the tools the university provides to bring her discovery to the marketplace.

In April 2023, Singh was on one of the 15 teams that competed for $40,000 in prizes at the Costello College of Business annual Patriot Pitch Competition. She took home first place and the Mason’s Choice Award in the competition’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) track.

In November 2023, Singh was at Mason Square pitching her technology at Mason’s annual Accelerate Investor Conference, which attracts more than 400 entrepreneurs, investors, students, and members of the Washington, D.C., entrepreneurial ecosystem. She was awarded $2,000 for her efforts.

“I'm a researcher by training. I've been trained to present at scientific conferences so talking in front of an audience was not difficult for me,” said Singh. “The difficult part was assimilating all of the business information that I've learned so far into a presentation or a slide deck, and to be able to present that in a time-constrained environment.”

Singh, now a postdoctoral fellow at Mason, has cofounded a company, NIRView Biosciences, with her bioengineering faculty mentors Remi Veneziano and Parag Chitnis, and Singh and NIRView Biosciences have been designated a 2023 Virginia Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Success Story.

“As we develop the company, [Veneziano and Chitnis] are involved in creating strategy and vision of the company, along with helping me write grants and obtain funding,” she said. “They provide me with mentorship on the technology front to be able to take this company forward.”

Singh and her cofounders were a few of 30,000 entrepreneurs who participated in a Virginia SBDC workshop, seminar, or training in 2023. Through its 16 programs, the Virginia SBDC, which is part of Mason Enterprise, helped 10,000 businesses, provided 40,000 hours of one-on-one counseling, offered 1,600 training programs, and incubated more than 550 companies with an impact of $3.36 billion. Of the businesses served, 61% were woman-owned, 46% were minority-owned, and 15% were veteran-owned.

Mason researcher Remi Veneziano, Shrishti Singh, and Parag Chitnis cofounded NIRView Biosciences. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

“The SBDC has been one of our biggest supporters,” Singh said. “I work extensively with my SBDC mentor, Elizabeth Pyle, who is always ready to be to give us advice on how to take the business forward.”

Singh and Veneziano participated in SBDC’s Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program (ICAP), a no-cost incubator that helps technology start-ups from ideation to initial funding and beyond. They worked with ICAP’s life science business mentors over the course of a year to position their technology for successful commercialization, and in 2023 they were accepted into the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, which provides financial support and experiential education to help university researchers commercialize scientific discoveries.

“The support of SBDC has been tremendous,” said Singh, who also has a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut and an engineering degree from Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India. “My training has been on the scientific front, so SBDC helped me learn different aspects of the lean business model canvas, customer discovery, and product-market fit, which was a new learning curve for me.”

Singh said while she chose Mason originally for its diversity, it is the people and community here that have made a difference in her life. “I have made friends, and I have gained mentors that are still an active part of my professional life,” she said. “I have been able to take this education and put it toward a better professional vision that I've always wanted. I can say Mason is the reason I have been able to accomplish a lot of my dreams.”

Costello College's Patriot Pitch Competition supports idea and early-stage business ventures and is open to current Mason students and recent alumni from all majors/fields of study.

Topics

Alumni

entrepreneurship

Patriot Pitch Competition

Mason Enterprise

Bioengineering

Research

Women's History Month

CEC Alumni

Mason Momentum

Costello College of Business News

Mason postdoc leads scientific breakthrough that could revolutionize cancer treatment

Colleen Rich — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 20:05:26 +0000

Mason postdoc leads scientific breakthrough that could revolutionize cancer treatment Colleen Rich Tue, 01/09/2024 - 15:05

It isn’t often that someone graduates with a PhD and a scientific discovery, but ��AV researcher Marissa Howard was no ordinary student.

Mason postdoc Marissa Howard in her lab on the Science and Technology Campus. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Howard, BS Bioengineering ’17, PhD Biosciences ’22, leads a team of scientists who have discovered a way to “eavesdrop” on cellular communications that could revolutionize treatments for cancer and other maladies.

All cells are constantly communicating with other cells using what Howard calls “an internet of molecular information.” Researchers at Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), where Howard has worked since she was an undergraduate, are the first scientists to successfully tap into this communications system, which tumors use to trick or block the immune system and attract normal cells.

Howard was recently awarded a $200k grant from the National Cancer Institute to further this work. It is a medical breakthrough that could drastically change the way cancer is treated.

“It’s fun to be able to get to the source of tumors and actually figure out what’s going on there,” said Howard, who completed some of this work as part of her dissertation. “That’s what all cancer researchers want to do—figure out what the tumor is ‘thinking’ so we can get better outcomes for patients.”

Howard and the team have been focused on a component of the cellular communication system called extracellular vesicles (EVs), which are packages of concentrated information housed within tiny membrane-enclosed bubbles. The EVs are shed from the surface of cells and can travel long distances to be received by distant cells, causing a change in the behavior of the message recipient.

In the past, EVs were studied in cultured cells or were captured from a patient’s blood, but the Mason team created a way to study the cancer EVs within a solid living tumor at their source by sampling the interstitial fluid (IF), the wet environment that bathes all cells within tissues. This is the first portrait of the tumor EV communication system at its origin. Their findings, with Howard as first author, were published in the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.

Their research also showed a dramatic difference in the communication function of the different major types of tumor tissue EVs. The scientists isolated the two major types of tumor EVs and then used nanoparticles, a Nanotrap technology created by CAPMM researchers, to deliver them to a draining lymph node.

Howard said that the treatment of the lymph node with the two separate classes of EVs was associated with dramatic differences in the growth of distance metastasis in the lung. “Repeated tests done in mice proved one class of isolated mitochondrial EVs capable of preventing the metastasizing of cancerous breast tumors while another class promoted cancerous growth.”

The discovery means doctors could more quickly gauge the effectiveness of existing cancer treatments and make real-time adjustments based on the information derived from the cellular communications.

It’s for that reason that the team’s discoveries have further implications beyond cancer, according to Lance Liotta, a Distinguished University Professor at Mason and the cofounder and codirector of CAPMM.

“These specific markers for mitochondrial health allow EVs to be a novel biomarker/diagnostic tool for cancer and other mitochondrial disorder diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease, or muscular dystrophy,” Liotta said.

Howard first began working with Liotta and other CAPMM scientists as a bioengineering major participating in Mason’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program, where she spent the summer studying the electrical properties of their Nanotrap technology.

Marissa Howard with CAPMM Director Lance Liotta and College of Science Dean Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm at the Mason Innovation Awards. Photo by John Boal Photography

“I really loved it,” she said of the work. “[The CAPMM scientists] were excited by the work I was doing and asked me to continue working with them. I've been in the CAPMM lab since 2016.”

Howard is also an inventor and shares several patents with her CAPMM colleagues. For her senior capstone project, Howard led a team of bioengineering students to create a noninvasive urine-based tuberculosis (TB) test using CAPMM’s Nanotrap technology, and the invention, called TB Assured, garnered a lot of attention for the team and many awards, including a $15,000 prize from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering’s Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) challenge to help develop the test further.

“Everything that's in the urine is captured by the Nanotraps, and you don't need a centrifuge or other equipment,” said Howard, who completed her bachelor’s degree in bioengineering in 2017. “People loved it. They keep asking when it is going to be available at their local pharmacy.”

“I love the research space and the creative potential that comes with it,” Howard said. “You never know when your next idea is going to pop up.”

In addition to Howard and CAPMM’s Liotta, the EV research collaboration also included Alessandra Luchini, Amanda Haymond, and Fatah Kashanchi within the College of Science; collaborator Robyn Araujo at Queensland University in Australia; graduate students James Erickson, Zachary Cuba, Weidong Zhou, Purva Gade, Rachel Carter, Kelsey Mitchell, Heather Branscome, Fatimah Alanazi, Yuriy Kim; and high school students Shawn Kim and Daivik Siddhi.

Colleen Kearney Rich contributed to this article.

Topics

Research

Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM)

Student Commencement speaker Shruti Sekar is destined to succeed, helping others along the way

Colleen Rich — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 16:14:21 +0000

Student Commencement speaker Shruti Sekar is destined to succeed, helping others along the way Colleen Rich Thu, 12/14/2023 - 11:14

In the summer before she started at ��AV, this year’s Student Commencement Speaker Shruti Sekar learned Python with her friends while participating in coding activities, which launched her passion for computer science.

Shruti Sekar.
Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

In her first semester, the computer science major joined Mason’s Student Government Senate and the Honors College’s Student Advisory Board. The next year, she worked as a teaching assistant for the Break Through Tech Summer Guild to introduce more women to computing. She also participated in Break Through Tech’s short-term Sprinternship program, where she received a chance to explore software engineering at Mastercard during winter break.

Since her junior year, Sekar has enjoyed supporting initiatives for students as a secretary for Girls Who Code. In her final semester, she helped to set up the executive board for the hardware hackathon HackOver-flow; participated in Mason’s President-Student Advisory Board; and founded Social Sandbox, a community engagement and technology club, with her team.

Sekar loves writing fiction, crafting lyrics and poems, and collaging scrapbooks. She also relaxes by spending time with friends, interacting with animals, creating products for hackathons, and playing video games. She attributes her success to her lovely friends and professors and, most importantly, to her parents and brother who have encouraged and uplifted her every step of the way. After graduation, Sekar will join Mastercard as a data engineer and continue working toward her accelerated master’s degree in computer science at Mason.

Sekar delivered the following remarks at Winter Commencement on Dec. 14 in EagleBank Arena.

Before I begin, I would like to congratulate the Winter 2023 graduating class! Even though we speak different languages, come from various countries, and study distinct disciplines, we all embody the determination and grit required to earn a degree as Mason Patriots! Congratulations to all undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students in the Class of 2023!

Every graduating class has a story to tell. Our story reaches beyond countless hours preparing for graduation, days of studying for finals, weeks of attending lectures, and years of working towards our degree.

Our story includes waves that shook our education.

We started by touching our screens to start video calls as we physically drifted apart during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We saw the skies painted orange as the weather wilted from wildfires flowing from Canada.

We heard shrill alarm bells ring and felt our hearts sink when nearby universities underwent lockdowns.

We felt a loss of rights with an increase in policies targeting LGBTQ+ communities and women.

We tasted desperation akin to apocalyptic nightmares with multiple wars.

But when undercurrents of tragedy rippled through, we, as a Mason community sent lifeboats to our peers drifting in turbulent waves.

For me, my first two semesters at Mason were the most isolating. My brain felt drained, my heart felt heavy, and my mind doubted itself. You see, Mason is the first place I took an actual coding class. As a computer science major, I had no prior experience besides block-based coding made for young kids.

I had heard terms relating to databases or software engineering from my dad and brother. Even when I was applying to Mason, I intended to study as a mechanical engineering major. But before orientation, I learned Python with my friend Swetha, and our connection gave me the confidence to switch into computer science.

But the transition was not easy. Seeing the mountains of technical knowledge other students displayed, I felt I would never be smart enough or do enough. When difficult coding assignments hit, or I found myself working past 1 a.m., I truly questioned if the path I was taking was the path I should be taking.

In the end, the problem didn’t lie in my ability; it lay in our lack of connection during the pandemic and our utter loneliness. Everyone took virtual classes, and we all pretended that we were doing fine. We apologized when we faced interruptions in Zoom, fine-tuned our lighting and microphones, and adjusted our camera to provide a picture-perfect view of ourselves. We sometimes even turned off our cameras to prevent others from noticing the chaos behind us.

The truth is that we students know that the outside world affects our education—yet we still try to isolate our own lives from our academics.

Despite my feeling of drowning in waves, the people around me pulled me to shore. The strength of the Mason community has always lay in reaching out and uplifting one another from the harshest currents in the ocean.

My mother and father continued to motivate me to pursue a higher education degree. My brother encouraged me to think critically about my four-year plan. My friends and professors empowered me through their kind words.

In particular, during my first semester at Mason, the Student Government Senate and the Honors College Student Advisory Board anchored me through the worst tempests of the pandemic. Administrators at the Honors College taught me the meaning of interdisciplinary collaboration and club presidents like Taye, Ghaaliyah, and Rosy highlighted the value of empathy and good leadership. In Student Government Senate, they listened to me and made me feel respected when I worked on mental health and accessibility initiatives.

The Honors College and Student Government supported me in creating events and learning more about community initiatives, which would serve as a template for the rest of my undergraduate experience. They taught me that we should pursue even the smallest of ideas and that we should all look out for each other.

While we were all in our little islands at home trying to hold steady through passing storms, these organizations made me feel like there were bridges between us and that we were never truly alone.

So many people at Mason are anchors for others.

I joined Break Through Tech and met phenomenal professors who led the initiatives to help women become involved in technology. I met women who were also learning how to code for the first time, and we all felt like we genuinely belonged in computer science. From there, I joined Girls Who Code and even founded the club Social Sandbox with my wonderful team and faculty advisor, Professor Peixoto, to merge technology with civic and community engagement.

Throughout my time in the student organizations at Mason, I met so many dedicated people; we became a network just like a school of fish where we all swam together toward a common goal of increasing the number of women in tech and helping each other succeed.

In my time at Mason, so many people made me, and people like me, feel included. It reminds me of how my brother once told me that it doesn’t matter how smart you are or what job you have. Instead, people will remember you by how you treat them.

So, Mason Patriots, I ask you: How does the story you write today impact the generations of tomorrow? How will you use the tools you learned to protect and improve your communities?

While there are many insurmountable issues in the world, the best way we can make progress is to start local, to start with our communities, to start with us. Already, I see that Mason’s community of green and gold continues to be an anchor of change for a better future.

While we saw the skies turn orange, and the waters turn green, Dr. Stafford’s classes studied the streams of Virginia’s waterways to understand pollution and how we can change it. While nationwide college enrollment dipped throughout the pandemic, seniors Nikita Alluri and Dhaksha Kannan created their own company, IncluYou, to help make the college transition easier. While we raised questions during the digital revolution of AI and Chat-GPT, Dr. Yao answered them to educate the next generation of computer scientists.

We watched our world change, and we decided to change the world together.

As I said before, we students know the world affects our education; however, as a graduating class, we didn’t let the world’s situation stop our studies.

We lost people, money, and security.

But we learned that the power of education and community cannot be taken away from us.

We learned that Patriots sponsor change within our state.

We learned that Patriots share a dream—that these graduates donning green and gold see, live, and change for creeks of calm and oceans of equality.

We shall continue to write tales where our voyages transcend waves of uncertainty and turmoil and instead transform into a story of success and support. Because as Mason’s graduating class of Winter 2023, we are the authors of our story.

Thank you and congratulations to the Class of 2023!

Watch the Commencement Ceremony

Experience Break Through Tech Sprinternships

Mason students land jobs, and Career Services plays a big role in that success

Colleen Rich — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 17:21:47 +0000

Mason students land jobs, and Career Services plays a big role in that success Colleen Rich Wed, 07/05/2023 - 13:21

There were many outstanding performers at ��AV this past academic year, from musicians to actors to athletes. Less celebrated but no less impressive was the virtuoso performance of a determined IT major at a job fair, a star turn that commanded the attention of University Career Services representatives.

Christina Tran arrived two hours early to the Spring Career Fair on February 22 in Dewberry Hall on the Fairfax Campus to study the list of employers who would be sending recruiters. She Googled companies to find ones that best matched her career goals, then circled the locations of the booths on an event map to prioritize those encounters.

Information technology major Christina Tran had a strategy for the Spring Career Fair. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Over the course of five hours, she visited 65 of the 120 booths. And then, after the last hand was shaken and the last business card tucked away, she attended a three-hour reception that extended the fair at the Center for the Arts and visited 20 more employers there. Then she returned the second day and visited at least 30 more.

“First in line both days,” Tran said.

Her strategy paid off. Tran, who plans to graduate in May 2024, landed a position as a Microsoft Solutions consultant with FSi Strategies, one of six offers she said she received from employers she met that day.

“The career fair got me this job,” said Tran, 27, who wrote personalized follow-up emails to each employer she spoke with, drawing from notes she took during each conversation.

“You need to come ready—[business] clothes on, resume printed, know your elevator pitch,” added Tran, who previously worked at Deloitte and had several years of management experience at spas. “I’m career-ready. I wanted to prove that. I wanted a job, and I was focused and had a plan and did it.”

Tran indeed is a model student when it comes to attacking the job market—University Career Services was so impressed with her preparation and performance that they asked to take her picture at the event. Tran’s image now graces the cover of the university’s annual Career Readiness Guide.

Mason graduates land jobs. Based on the annual career outcomes survey and supplemental data collected from sources like LinkedIn and the National Student Clearinghouse for the Class of 2022, 87% of grads had a positive career outcome within six months of graduation and 89% said they are in positions related to career goals. Most settle locally—86% are employed in the District of Columbia, Maryland or Virginia. The respondents’ median salary is $72,000.

More than 120 employers took part in the Spring Career Fair. Photo by Evan Cantwell/OUB

The outcomes are similar to prior years. But even more Mason students need to increase their engagement in the job-seeking process, University Career Services Executive Director Saskia Campbell said.

Throughout the year, Mason offers 11 career fair days to provide facetime for employers and students and graduates. One is the Just-In-Time Hiring Fair the week after graduation, which drew nearly 100 employers and 700 job seekers.

“Most colleges and universities aren’t able to sustain an event that late in the year,” Campbell said. “It means that our job market is really, really strong and that there are opportunities year-round. There is always hiring happening here.

“It helps when graduates put in some effort and are flexible about where they’re willing to work and look at medium-sized organizations.”

Tran upped her career fair game after attending one that resulted in no offers. So for the next one, instead of showing up an hour after it started, she showed up two hours early. She spent more time on a professional appearance. She honed an informative yet tight elevator pitch.

“I really wanted to be recognized,” Tran said. “You have to be able to take what you failed from and jump back from it.”

The daughter of immigrants and the middle of five children, Tran was the first of the five to complete high school. At 19, while attending Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), she gave birth to a daughter, Collette. She graduated from NOVA with an associate of science degree, and examined her options.

“I knew that Mason and going to college was the only way to get to the future that I wanted,” she said. That includes her concentration in cyber security, with a minor in criminology, law and society.

Tran works with Mason tutors, mentors, teaching assistants to make sure she understands the course material. She color-codes priorities. She budgets her social time frugally, often focusing on events hosted by campus organizations she supports, such as the Vietnamese Student Association, the Filipino Cultural Association and the Society of Women Engineers.

Her best friend? LinkedIn.

Drawing from her own experiences and other resources, Tran has compiled a detailed checklist for job seekers, a list of tips that includes choosing attire, identifying prospective employers, and showing up with the proper materials. She does not judge the approach of other students but can see where a few simple but key adjustments—starting with utilizing University Career Services—could enhance their prospects.

“I could have chosen not to go to school and to work full-time, but I know I’m capable of finishing the program and a degree,” Tran said. “I feel like I’m meant for more. I love the stability knowing for certain that I’ll graduate and people will hire me.

“Mason has opened many doors for me. I’m motivated to get to a leadership position one day. I know I can make a difference.”

Drawing from her own experiences and other resources, Tran has compiled a detailed checklist for job seekers, including tips on choosing attire, identifying prospective employers, and showing up with the proper materials.

Class of 2022 Survey Respondents Report

University Career Services annually polls the previous year's graduating class to see how their career is progressing. Graduates from the Class of 2022 reported: