News consumption is vastly changing due to technology and the 24-hour news cycle. People aren’t rushing to newsstands or watching cable programming for the latest on current events anymore. Cleve Pasarell, Engr ’04, decided to choose a career in online media after seeing the demand for traditional news platforms diminish.
Media is an uncommon field for most engineers, but for Pasarell, it was the perfect opportunity to combine his research interests in artificial intelligence and computer engineering. In 2017, Pasarell founded Granite Media, a digital publishing company.
“We believe that tech will shape the future of media and entertainment—and that insightful use of data is already key to publishing success,” says Pasarell.
From a young age, Pasarell had an interest in computer engineering; he was always fascinated by how things worked and spent a lot of time dismantling home electronics.
“In my early teenage years, I turned my destructive hobby into a constructive hobby and started designing and constructing my own PCs,” says Pasarell.
From that point on, Pasarell became obsessed with knowing everything about computers and decided to study the design of both computer hardware and software.
Cleve Pasarell during his first year at Hopkins in 2000.
At Hopkins, two courses in AI and computer vision, both taught by Mandell Bellmore Professor of Computer Science Gregory D. Hager, really piqued Pasarell’s interest in computer science.
“Those courses were the first opportunities that I had to take all the theoretical knowledge that I’d learned in the first couple of years and apply solutions to practical problems. That is where I wanted to take my career—focusing on the practical,” says Pasarell.
Hopkins was a life-changing experience for Pasarell. And he’s passionate about the success of the next generation of engineers, so he offers three pieces of advice: learn practical skills outside of the classroom, build your network, and ask for help.
“It’s important to learn software development best practices and to learn how to use modern tooling and frameworks. Also, the more people that you have in your network and feel comfortable with reaching out to, the more career options you’re going to have and the broader your horizons will be,” he says.
While based in Northern California, Pasarell is an active alumnus, participating on various Hopkins alumni boards and committees. He is currently a member of the department’s External Advisory Board.
Pasarell’s digital media company is headquartered in San Francisco, California and reaches over 10 million readers per month.
“Our core technology is a sophisticated publisher trading desk—an automated, AI-driven marketing platform for professionally published articles and videos,” says Pasarell.