Work Life

I started working last week at CENIT, a transportation research center associated with Universitat Polytecnica de Canalunya (the technical university here). I worked there last summer too, so I somewhat knew what to expect coming in. Most of the people working there are PhD or Maters students from UPC. I recognized many faces from last summer, so it was nice to see people again! I´m slowly getting settled in the office, meeting new people and getting used to the daily routine. I´m working with the same professor I worked with last summer, who specializes in public transportation projects. I´m working on two projects right now. Last summer I helped develop a model to create an efficient bus network, and they have since updated the model. I am updated the paper, describing the new attributes to the model. The paper is in English, and being the only native English speaker in the office, I´m the ideal person for the job. My other project is applying a similar bus network efficiency model to the city of Barcelona. Right now there are many intercity bus routes that operate between nearby towns and Barcelona. We are going to recommend route changes to those routes that will hopefully improve the efficiency of the overall transit system. For me it´s really exciting to be able to actually apply some of these technical models to a real world situation. But it hasn´t been all work. Last Thursday night many of us from the office went out to a good-bye dinner for someone who is leaving CENIT. Afterwards we went out to a bar and ended up dancing until 3am (my professor included). Somehow everyone made it to work the next morning, but I definitely came in late! It´s a fun group in the office. I´m looking forward to getting to know everyone better. I´m also happy to have found some interesting projects and I hope I can be productive!