One hundred and thirty-six of the best and brightest technology students have been identified from 11 Midwest Top Universities, through the 2011 ITA Fall Challenge. The responsibility lies on the local industry to keep them in Illinois.
“These students are among the future leaders of technology – educated here at our world-class Midwest universities,” said Fred Hoch, President, ITA. “The technology industry of Illinois needs to keep these bright minds at home and continue to nurture their talent. On behalf of our member companies, we are committed to doing just that.”
The Fall Challenge was developed to create a strong conduit of talent from the world-class universities in our backyard to the thriving local tech community. The ITA Fall Challenge engages universities, alumni, and students with some of the world-class tech businesses who call the Midwest home, growing the awareness of the opportunities here in Illinois.
“With the 6th largest gap between open technology positions and qualified talent in the nation, it’s even more incumbent upon those of us within the Illinois technology sector to ensure the best and brightest talent is retained,” said PointBridge Co-founder and ITA Talent Leadership Board member Lance Russell. “PointBridge is passionate and dedicated to helping bridge the technology gap in Illinois, and we applaud ITA’s leadership in this endeavor. Part of the battle is making sure students are aware of the great opportunities available to them in Illinois, and ITA is helping make that a reality. PointBridge has found tremendous success in the new graduates we’ve hired from surrounding Midwest universities, and plan to continue to recruit talent in the future.
The finalists from schools visited are:
University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
Corbin Souffrant
Brendan Flanagan-Rosario
Ronald Liu
Sukolsak Sakshuwong
Andrew Pritchard
Daniel Liu
Robert Pieta
Reza Shiftehafar
Sean Hurley
Justin Kopinsky
Alex Decker
Matt “Murph” Finnicum
Keunhong Park
Yihua Lou
Jurand Nogiec
Tej Chajed
Duo Zhang
Josh Benbenek
Nicholas Jeffrey
Nathan DeGrand
Mingcheng Chen
Jayanth Madheswaran
Eric Mills
Daniel Winski
Kevin Verre
David Stein
Tsung-Lin Hsieh
Josh Holat
Aleksander Lopatin
Darshan Sanghani
Jordan Ebel
Kevin Banker
Perry Huang
Zhuoyuan Li
Thayalan Pirapakaran
Shengjie Wang
Illinois Institute of Technology
Jesse Taylor
Syed Madani
Jeff Engel
Xuanxing Xiong
Anirudh Sunkineni
Jeffrey Johnson
Kwadwo Anane
Ben Siver
Rachel Walker
Rahul Nair
Rupesh Ramachandra
Francesc Massanes
Allen Baker
Praneeth Tota
Brandon Pecylak
Mariano Divittorio
David Biedrzycki
Chen Shou
Corey Sarsfield
Bharat Raghavan
Prashastha Purushothama
Mark McGuire
University of Chicago
Damon Wang
Benjamin Gammage
Reed Molbak
Kevin Wang
Louis Wasserman
Runnan Yang
Kai Li
Northern Illinois University
Malyssa Galloway
Chi Zhang
Ross Hettel
Praveen Gajjala
Vincent Schramer
Zhihao Yuan
John Kakumanu
DePaul University
Damien Radtke
Matthew Young
University of Illinois at Chicago
Kevin Varkey
Chi Su
Islam Ismailov
Kunal Seth
Vivek Hariharan
Allie Curry
Garrett Padera
Sean Deitz
Francesco Costa
Craig Targosz
Alberto Gnemmi
Guan Wang
Sihong Xie
Vineet Menon
Bhaskaran Srinivasan
Cosmin Stroe
Camillo Lugaresi
Christine Costales
Divya Muppa
Nikhil Sunderraj
Northwestern University
Xudong Liu
Gabriel Peal
Jonathan Friedman
Ross Epstein
Dennis Ai
Josiah Matlack
Sergey Krilov
Bharath Pattabiraman
Ed Kim
Michael Hueschen
Yixi Zhang
Southern Illinois University
Kyle Turley
Timothy Kluthe
Jeffrey Wilson
Isaac Hatton
Shawn LeMaster
Aaron Rench
William Stimson
Jacob Byers
Louis Koester
Brian Richards
Illinois State University
Seth Hare
Justin Deresinski
Brian Jesse
Mradul Jain
Stephen Palmerin
Rajeev Sudarsan
Nicholas Skeels
Prasoon Jakhetia
Ravichandra Namburi
Nick Dunne
Elliott Mahler
Alex Duhanov
Loyola University
Martin Bradley
Richard Schmidt
Saloni Shah
Lina Qu
Purdue University
Bala Gnanasekaran
Pratik Savla
Dhruv Chhabra
Kevin Van Dyke
Meghana Chitale
About PointBridge
PointBridge is an IT consulting firm that specializes in building high-impact business solutions with Microsoft technology. With our elite partner status with Microsoft, we have the depth and expertise to create swift, seamless and successful enterprise-wide solutions.
PointBridge focuses on connecting people to people and people to information with Microsoft technologies. Our areas of expertise include: SharePoint Architecture, Microsoft Exchange Implementation, Unified Communications Solutions, Business Intelligence Consulting, Custom Development, Support and Microsoft Cloud Computing.
About the ITA
The Illinois Technology Association (ITA) is a driving force behind the growth of Illinois’ vibrant technology industry. We are relentless in championing the development and application of technology, from start-up companies to industry leaders, leveraging the transformative nature of technology to revolutionize industries. ITA uniquely capitalizes peer-to-peer collaboration, networking, and access to experts across the breadth of business to cultivate the Illinois technology industry. The unique and powerful integration of these valuable and experienced resources differentiates the ITA as a source of accelerated growth for the technology industry of Illinois. For more information about ITA, please visit www.illinoistech.org.
Contact the ITA at headquarters@illinoistech.org, follow the discussion on Twitter at @itabuzz, and visit www.illinoistech.org to find out more about how ITA supports the growth of the local industry.