The Knewton Blog

In the past few weeks, we’ve welcomed five new engineers to the Knewton team. Brandon Reiss joins Knewton as a software engineer on our Adaptive Learning team. Before coming to Knewton, Brandon worked at a startup called Organic Motion, where he contributed to all aspects of designing and implementing a computer vision based markerless motion capture system. Brandon studied Computer Science and Mathematics at NYU. He’s a big Seinfeld fan and also likes to cycle,… Read more

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Wistia is an awesome startup that provides professional video hosting and analytics services to a number of companies — including Knewton. They recently featured a blog post by our own Jess Nepom with tips for editing video on an iPhone. If you’re interested in Jess’ thoughts on editing apps, check out the original post. Here, we thought we’d feature her final, iPhone-edited product — a video of the first meetup at our new office: “Understanding… Read more

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This summer we were lucky to have a rockstar set of interns on our tech team. Here’s just a quick look at some of what they accomplished this summer: Andersen Chen worked on models for estimating the way student proficiencies change over time. Most existing methods are focused on point estimates resulting from tests and surveys, so they don’t concern themselves with how students improve over time — but that’s exactly what we’re focused on!  Andersen worked with… Read more

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Somehow, Labor Day has come and gone and fall is fast approaching. In the midst of a busy August, we welcomed three new Knerds to the Knewton team. Shawn Lauzon joins us as a Senior Software Engineer on the Platform team. Originally from Austin, TX, and Madison, WI, Shawn graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Before coming to Knewton, he was working on Android development in Austin. As a brand-new New Yorker, Shawn’s… Read more

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This is the latest installment of our blog series about Knerd side projects. When he’s not busy coding at Knewton, Senior Software Engineer Nikos Michalakis keeps busy writing stories and making up games for kids. I talked to Nikos to learn a bit more about the website he runs, called DrTechniko. What’s the purpose of DrTechniko? DrTechniko educates young kids (starting at age 5 or so) about computer science and technology through stories and games…. Read more

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This is the latest installment in our blog series highlighting Knerd side projects. I started the literary magazine LitCouture 4 years ago, right after I graduated from an MFA program in creative writing. Using my own network of writers and my knowledge of small presses, I was able to build up an organization fairly quickly. Right off the bat, I was thrilled with the kind of talent we were able to attract. We published winners of… Read more

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Knewton recently welcomed Ryan Prichard as our new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). We’re really excited to have Ryan on the team, and thought we’d throw him a few “get to know you” questions before he got too settled in. Where are you from? I’m originally from the Jersey Shore. That’s right, I belong to the “we don’t pump our gas, we pump our fists” crew and I couldn’t be more proud. Where did you go… Read more

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Here at Knewton, we put a high value on creativity and entrepreneurship, and it shows in the way our team members choose to spend their time outside of work. At any given time a large number of Knerds are working away at side projects — artistic endeavors, business ventures, athletic competitions, and more.  Before he started working in edtech at Knewton, Senior Marketing Associate Robbie Mitchell was working on a different educational project: rap songs…. Read more

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We welcomed three new team members in July. Here’s a brief introduction to our newest Knerds! Sara Ittelson (left) isn’t really new to Knewton, having spent three months here as an MBA intern in the summer of 2011. She left us for a little while to finish up her MBA and Masters in Education at Stanford, but now she’s back for good as the Director of Business Development. Sara is originally from Chico, CA, and received… Read more

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I still remember when I first came to Knewton for my interview over two years ago. I said I was interested in marketing. I was told I could start off in academics drafting verbal coursework. The director assured me that there were plenty of opportunities for “cross-pollination” (at the time, I thought this was an original metaphor ). Within a few days, I started blogging for the marketing team. Within a few months, I was… Read more

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