Rice juniors score high-profile internships

Engineering students named Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers fellows

Two Rice University juniors will spend 12 weeks this summer working with cutting-edge tech entrepreneurs in California, courtesy of one of the nation’s premier fellowship programs for engineers.

Kathy Li and Linda Zheng, both computer science majors, have been selected to take part in the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Engineering Fellows program, which gives dozens of students the opportunity to work at a startup that is part of the venture capital firm’s portfolio.

Li and Zheng are among the 60 students selected from more than 2,500 who applied for this year’s program, which is in its fourth year. Program administrators interviewed more than 600 for the available positions.

Linda Zheng

Zheng, from Sid Richardson College, will spend her fellowship at Shape Security, which develops next-generation Internet security systems.

“In my freshman year I heard about junior and seniors who had done this fellowship, where you apply to one place and they pair you up with a whole bunch of different companies,” said Zheng, who is pursuing a second degree in statistics. “Once you pass the initial stages, you can choose the one you want to interview for.”

Shape Security appealed to her for its focus on sophisticated cybersecurity and cryptography and the fact that she’ll be working on substantive projects. “This is a startup and they really do need the help, so I don’t think I’ll be getting an ‘intern’ project that other employees don’t want to do.”

The Portland, Ore., native is also looking forward to a summer in the Bay Area. “It was one of my dream places to be as a child,” she said.

Kathy Li

Hanszen College’s Li, a San Jose, Calif., native who is studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland this semester, has been accepted to work at Flipboard, a Palo Alto company that began with an iPad “personal magazine” app in 2010 and has expanded to other platforms. “I was really excited about Flipboard because it’s a product I use myself, to read the news on my phone,” she said.

“I’m going to be on the operations team, sometimes referred to as DevOps,” Li said. “In general, you can describe it as work that supports and enables the application to shine. Rather than working on the consumer-facing product on the Web or Android team, Ops takes care of performance and reliability.”

According to the firm, the students’ experience will be supplemented by special events and programs led by mentors from the companies and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partners, including Rice alum John Doerr ’73, a venture capitalist known for helping build Amazon, Google, Twitter and other companies.