Chartbeat is proud to be a part of WayUp’s first-ever National Intern Day dedicated to celebrating interns across the country. We value the efforts of our interns, and we’re happy to give them the independence to work on important projects and become involved in a variety of departments. As a way to show our appreciation for their daily contributions as significant members of our team, we took some photos and asked them some questions to provide an inside look at Chartbeat’s summer interns.

Jamie

I attend Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ where I’m majoring in Computer Science and have just 2 classes remaining before finishing my degree! I’m also from Livingston, NJ (sadly it’s the same town where Chris Christie grew up).

How did you find out about Chartbeat?

I went to a hackNY alumni (alumNY) event and I met Manny there! My friend nudged me really hard to go ask Manny if Chartbeat was looking for any interns and after some intimidating interviews, I’m here!

What is your go-to news source?

reddit! It’s an odd combination of semi-misleading titles and passionate commenters. I enjoy keeping up to date while reading the dramatic reactions of others who haven’t taken the time to read said article.

What is your favorite part about interning in Union Square?

I have a lot of friends who are currently working in the city around the Union Square area. So it’s really easy to hang out with them after work! There are also a ton of nearby yummy places to go eat and parks to relax in after work.

Denis

I am a student at University of Colorado, Boulder, and I am studying Applied Math and Computer Science. I’m originally from Russian, Moscow but my current hometown is Colorado.

What do you like best about your specific position?

I love that I have gotten the creative freedom to research and think of what products could be done with Chartbeat’s data. I learned a ton of business acumen this way that I was very curious about.

How do you like to spend your weekends away from Chartbeat?

I love classical music, good people, and hip hop dancing. Gladly, NYC is a perfect place to find all of those in a vast abundance.

What is your go-to news source?

I love the Economist. It is a great journal for getting an educated and well-researched perspective on various subjects. In particular, I read their technology, finance, and economics subsections.

Lauren

I’m a Business Administration major at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and I’m from Staten Island, NY.

How did you find out about Chartbeat?

I found out about Chartbeat through a program called NYC Ladders for Leaders. This program connects high school and college students with summer internship opportunities in New York City in a variety of fields. After submitting my application to them, my program provider informed me about the opportunity with Chartbeat which eventually led to an interview.

How do you like to spend your weekends away from Chartbeat?

On my weekends in the summer, I enjoy being outside as much as possible. I like taking trips to the beach, exploring new places, and staying active by walking, running or biking.

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

I’d go with teleportation. I like the idea of skipping travel time altogether, and it would give me the opportunity to visit exotic destinations all over the world in an instant. Another perk would be not needing to worry about being late for things.

Max

I am a first year PhD student at Cornell University, where I’ve worked on projects broadly related to natural language processing, from designing new approaches to text summarization to understanding and predicting how users read and engage with Web pages. I have lived in many different places, including in Finland for a week.

What is your favorite part of interning in Union Square?

I used to think of “Union Square” as just a sad-looking subway station. However, it turns out that it is also a thing above ground! The above-ground part is very pleasant and thoughtfully designed, with lots of bird life if that’s your thing (it’s my thing). Overall rating: 9.5/10

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

I want to be a dog.

What do you like best about your specific position?

What makes a story work well? How can we improve the quality of our writing, photos, and other content? And how can we better understand what users are interested in and want to read? Chartbeat has an amazing amount of data linking content — articles, photos, videos, and more — to the users who engage with it. Chartbeat also has a fantastic data science team, that I’m very happy to be a part of this summer! While I’m here, I’ve been exploring these interesting questions, and using the unique data available here to improve our understanding of both stories and the audience that reads them. Finding patterns and other insights in user engagement on the Web is the first step to understanding a much more difficult, but immensely interesting question: What makes writing good?