Before joining UPOP as Executive Director in November of 2007 Susann Luperfoy had spent most of her career as a research scientist and engineering manager in applied artificial intelligence. She has also worked for several tech-based startups as director in engineering or as a member of the technical board of advisors. Her organizational experience in academia, government, and industry spans a broad range of organizations, from pre-IPO start-ups to mature public corporations. Her technical training, applied research work, and teaching have all centered on the domain of Artificial Intelligence, with an emphasis on knowledge representation, spoken dialog, machine translation, computational discourse, acoustic phonetics, and intelligent tutoring systems.
She has authored and edited over 30 publications, and delivered over 40 invited lectures and technical tutorials on AI research and its application. She has also organized workshops, symposia, special interest groups, and standards committees, and served on the technical boards of five Cambridge start-ups. Her board service prompted the study of some of the organizational and management challenges associated with the transition from tech-based start-up to successful commercial enterprise.
Following a postdoctoral research stint on interpreting telephony in Kyoto, Japan, Dr. Luperfoy taught AI and Linguistics at Georgetown University for eight years where she guided graduate research in AI and natural language processing topics.
As an engineering director at Akamai, she directed the growth of the department that delivered analysis and visualization tools to commercial customers and to the internal team of 24/7 network performance monitoring staff. Just prior to joining MIT full time, she developed simulation-based intelligent tutoring systems for customer domains as diverse as surgeons and surgery instructors to military combat personnel.
Dr. Luperfoy has been committed to UPOP’s mission since its inception, and has observed its positive impact on the four participants that she mentored as an employer. She was one of the first recipients of the Desh and Jaishree Deshpande UPOP Service Award, which recognizes outstanding volunteers.
Dr. Luperfoy enjoys sports that involve acceleration: downhill skiing, motorcycle riding, and tennis; but she also runs marathons once in a while, very slowly.
Sharona Jacobs
Program Manager, Student & Alumni Relations
Sharona joined the UPOP team in March 2007 after working as a school-based psychotherapist in the Boston Public School system and at Tufts University. In 2006, she received her masters’ degree in Counseling Psychology from Boston College, returning back to school mid-career. Previous to receiving her masters’ degree, Sharona worked as a marketing product manager at Aquent, the world’s leading marketing and creative staffing agency. Sharona earned her BFA in Communication Design, with minors in Photography and Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University. When Sharona joined the UPOP program, her EE father breathed a sigh of relief, and declared her "one of us, now." Sharona enjoys cycling and ballroom dancing with her husband, Jeremy, and trying to keep up with her extremely active toddler, Lilia.
Ronda Devine
Program Manager, Employer Relations
Ronda joined the UPOP team in August 2006 after working in campus recruiting at Amazon.com in Seattle, WA. Prior to Amazon, Ronda lived in Japan for three years where she taught English and completed her master's degree in Education. Before heading off to Japan, Ronda worked in HR/staffing roles at Corestaff, a staffing services agency, and Keane Inc., an IT services company. Ronda earned her BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Washington after taking some time to backpack around the world. She has recently discovered a new hobby in photography and continues to enjoy the adventure of exploring Boston and all that the Northeast has to offer.
Jessica Jones
Administrative Assistant
Jessica Jones joined UPOP after 30 years of work in her family’s consulting business. She has co-led support groups for thyroid cancer survivors, parents of hyperactive children, and has taught parenting classes in a variety of settings. She is an active volunteer producer at her local cable-access TV station, and enjoys graphic design, digital photography, and detective novels. Born in Australia, she has lived in Britain, New Zealand, Fiji, Australia, and Canada.Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 | 617.253.0077