Undergraduate Student Profiles

Name: Jeff S. Klein
Year: 2006
Majors: Computer Science Engineering, Finance
Minors: Mathematics
Hometown: Reston, Virginia

What's your greatest accomplishment outside the classroom at Penn?
Penn's school of engineering and applied sciences provides many opportunities for students to learn and thrive outside of the classroom. My greatest accomplishment so far at Penn was in the planning and completion of a service based trip to Ghana to provide and teach technology. I had this opportunity as the President of CommuniTech, a unique student driven digital divide organization. Through CommuniTech I have also worked on the planning side of trips to India, Pakistan, and Cameroon. I could never have imagined before coming to Penn that I would be traveling to Africa and making such a tremendous difference.

What is your favorite part of SEAS?
No question in my mind the best part of SEAS is the people. We have the friendliest students and the smartest faculty and the administrators that keep it all going are absolutely top notch. Perhaps due to its moderate size, there is also a tremendous camaraderie between engineers that grows out of many shared experiences. Because students tend to be more serious and knowledgeable about their work, learning in engineering often occurs effectively between peers working in small groups on labs and problem sets. This makes the work more manageable and often a lot more fun. Soon your peers become your friends and there really is nothing better than a friendly face after a tough midterm or during a final project.

What has been your favorite engineering class and why?
My favorite engineering class has been the "Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science" taught by Max Mintz. The course begins with proofs involving the primes, progressing through modular arithmetic, and equivalence relations. The capstone is a complete and inside-out understanding of the RSA encryption algorithm. Naturally, in any great course it is not so much about the material as the methods and this course is no exception as it stretched my thinking ability in every which way so as to gain the capacity that I needed for what was to come. I still have the course notes, which I treasure dearly as an example of beauty and elegance in mathematics. This class was highlighted in the New York Times in an article entitled "Tough Love," expressing its rigor and difficulty, but also the love of learning that ensues in the students.

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