Pietro Morino, an EMIT Student Goes to the MIT

For his internship he chose a research experience at GREEN, Bocconi's Centre for Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy and Networks, and in less than two months he will move to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has succeeded in winning a position as a visiting student (from May 1 to October 31) at the Senseable City Lab, a laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that aims to anticipate the evolution of cities and improve citizens' lives through the analysis of the large amount of data produced by sensors, smartphones and networks that blanket the urban space.

Pietro Morino, a second-year student at the MSc in Economics and Management of Innovation and Technology (EMIT), has shown that he's keen about this position. «When I attended a conference of the Lab Director, Carlo Ratti», says Pietro, «I was fascinated and began to gather information on opportunities to work at the Senseable City Lab. I sent a first motivation letter and they replied to come back to them in September 2018, when there would be open positions for visiting students». Pietro passed a first screening based on CVs and then found himself facing the challenging task of a presentation via Skype according to the PechaKucha prescriptions: 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, compelling synthesis and clarity.

An integral part of the selection process were also the three reference letters requested by the Laboratory. One of these letters was written by EMIT's Director Myriam Mariani. «Pietro is undoubtedly a brilliant and enterprising student», says Prof. Mariani. «He represents well the kind of students that EMIT selects and trains, open to non-standard experiences, curious to explore different fields related to the economics and management of innovation, that now permeates all sectors, according to methods of analysis that EMIT teaches - different but all based on the utmost logical rigor».

«In order to prepare myself properly for the presentation, I read about fifteen studies from previous projects of the Laboratory», says Pietro. In particular, his focus was on mobility-sharing projects, the topic of his undergraduate dissertation. «A spin-off of the Senseable City Lab created a bicycle wheel that contains not only an electric engine for assisted cycling, but also sensors capable of collecting a large amount of information, and I wondered what could be done, in terms of user experience and network optimization, by applying this wheel to the vehicles of an urban bike-sharing system».

Thanks to his experience at GREEN, Pietro has learnt about the reality of scientific research and this has strengthened the decision to make it his future activity, starting a path that will have to go through a PhD. «At MIT, in addition to a great academic experience, I also expect human enrichment, thanks to the interaction with those who have already experienced a PhD».