Follow us on Instagram
Try our daily mini crossword
Play our latest news quiz
Download our new app on iOS/Android!

U. startup summer internship program: new Shanghai location

psip.png
Students pictured at their PSIP internship locations Courtesy of the Keller Center

University Ph.D. alumnus Yi Wang ‘09 created an English language-teaching company, Liulishuo, which now has 50 million users. Wang has since used his entrepreneurship expertise to collaborate with another Princeton Ph.D. recipient, Arvid Wang GS ‘11 and the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education to create a third location for the Princeton Startup Immersion Program (PSIP): Shanghai.

PSIP is a 10-week long summer internship program that provides University undergraduate and graduate students of all majors with real-world experience at emerging startups in a city of their choice. Since 2016, students have interned at New York and Tel Aviv through this internship. Starting in 2019, the program will also be available in Shanghai.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Yi Wang is offering Princeton students the experience of a lifetime — a chance to experience entrepreneurship first hand in the exciting area of artificial intelligence and in the rapidly growing innovation ecosystem in China,” said Jennifer Rexford ’91, engineering professor and Wang’s Ph.D. advisor. 

Victoria Scott ’18 completed both PSIP programs in 2016 and 2017, in New York and Jerusalem respectively. She explained that the unique thing about PSIP is that the small companies that participate in the program will throw you directly into the fray. 

Scott now works as a technical solutions specialist at International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), an American multinational information technology company.

“There is no formula you can follow,” she said. 

Avthar Sewrathan ’18 interned in New York City at Andela, an American company that specializes in training software developers. He said that the PSIP internship taught him about the systems and processes that are used to grow a company.

“The [PSIP] experience has been invaluable as I've now co-founded and am running my own startup full time,” Sewrathan said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sewrathan’s startup, Afari, provides a social network that helps people better control their data and privacy, monetize their production and consumption of social media, and have more authentic connections with other social media users.

The 2019 PSIP programs will run from June 10 to Aug. 16. Applications for the 2019 summer ended on Dec. 1. Undergraduates can apply for the 2020 program through the Keller Center.

Subscribe
Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »