CS Ph.D. Student Gains Industry Insight at Apple
For many graduate students, an internship offers a chance to see how their research holds up outside the lab. Oytun Duran, a third-year computer science Ph.D. student, had that opportunity this summer at Apple.
Duran spent nearly four months interning at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. His work during the internship focused on Apple’s Foundation Models, a series of generative AI models that power Apple Intelligence, and on the large-scale infrastructure and tooling around them.
Duran’s research interests lie at the intersection of computer architecture, systems, and machine learning. More recently, he has focused on making artificial intelligence (AI) workloads more accessible, sustainable, and cost-effective. Duran is co-advised by Associate Professor Yingyan (Celine) Lin and Assistant Professor Anand Iyer in the School of Computer Science.
Duran said he saw the internship as an opportunity to gain industry experience and apply his knowledge to real-world problems.
“Industry research is particularly exciting to me because you can work on challenging problems while also seeing how these ideas can translate into systems and products at a very large scale and impact nearly a billion lives,” he said.
As a research intern, Duran especially appreciated the level of independence he was given. He was expected to take initiative to find problems on his own and then develop solutions with his mentors. Although Duran liked taking ownership of his work, he also came to better understand the value of outside input.
“One thing I’m continuing to improve is recognizing when it’s more efficient to ask for input earlier rather than spending too much time trying to solve everything independently,” he said.
Duran said he enjoyed the internship, especially the people he met. However, the biggest highlight for him was presenting his work.
“I had the opportunity to present several times, including to larger audiences across different organizations, and I really enjoyed discussing the findings and getting feedback from people with different perspectives,” he said.
In addition to the technical knowledge he gained, Duran said the experience gave him a new perspective on how research and engineering work in industry.
“I realized that combining strong research with real business needs can often create much greater impact than research alone,” he said.
“I really enjoyed seeing my work translate into something with broader, tangible impact, and that has influenced the kind of work I want to pursue in the future.”
