Designing a career, on and off the track, at MIT

Featured image: Krystal Montgomery in the MIT design studio

MIT senior Krystal Montgomery is finishing her undergraduate journey with a foot‑race finish line and a software‑development start line. A Computer Science and Engineering major (Course 6‑3) who also minors in Design (Course 4), she has turned the theoretical tools of both disciplines into tangible prototypes—most notably an AI‑enhanced binocular called blank‑scope—and into a record‑setting track record that helped MIT capture its first NCAA Division III Outdoor National Championship.

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From code to craft: the technical path

Montgomery’s first foray into design came in the fall of her freshman year with 4.021 – Design Studio: How to Design taught by Paul Pettigrew. The studio’s emphasis on rapid physical iteration gave her access to the architecture department’s laser cutters, CNC mills, and metal‑working benches. Within weeks she could laser‑cut acrylic housings, powder‑coat aluminum brackets, and stitch fabric‑wrapped prototypes. Those hands‑on sessions built a mental model of the design‑to‑fabrication loop that would later complement her software training.

The real synthesis happened in Marcelo Coelho’s 4.043 – Design Studio: Interaction Intelligence. The course is structured around three pillars:

1. Physical prototyping – students fabricate enclosures, sensor mounts, and ergonomic interfaces using the MIT MakerSpace and the MIT.nano cleanroom.
2. Embedded programming – the curriculum requires mastery of micro‑controller ecosystems (Arduino, ESP‑32) and integration with Python‑based data pipelines.
3. Neural‑network deployment – teams train lightweight models (e.g., TensorFlow Lite) on edge devices to enable real‑time inference.

Montgomery’s team applied this workflow to blank‑scope, a binocular that presents a live video feed from one eye while the other eye displays a speculative view generated by a generative‑adversarial network (GAN). The device captures a 1080p stream, runs a style‑transfer model on an onboard Coral Edge TPU, and overlays the output onto a see‑through OLED panel. The result is a split‑vision experience: one lens shows the present, the other hints at a past or future scenario based on user‑selected prompts.

The project is open‑source; the repository can be explored at the blank‑scope GitHub page. The codebase includes:

• A Python script for data collection and model training on MIT’s GPU cluster.
• Firmware for the ESP‑32 that handles sensor fusion and video stitching.
• A web‑based control panel for selecting GAN styles and adjusting latency.

Beyond the novelty factor, the prototype demonstrates a workflow that bridges high‑level AI research and low‑level hardware integration—a skill set increasingly demanded by companies building AR/VR headsets, autonomous vehicle dashboards, and industrial inspection tools.

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Athletic achievement as a laboratory for resilience

Montgomery’s athletic résumé is as impressive as her technical one. She anchored MIT’s women’s 4×400 m relay to a national title in 2025 and posted a personal best of 2:09.51 in the 800 m at the FIRE Meet, ranking eighth nationally among Division III athletes. An injury during her sophomore indoor season forced her to miss a full competitive year, a setback that coincided with a heavy course load and the pressure of internship interviews.

In interviews she describes a mental‑training regimen that mirrors the iterative design process: plan → prototype → test → iterate. She logged sleep, nutrition, and stress metrics in a custom spreadsheet, using simple statistical analysis to identify correlations between recovery patterns and race times. The data‑driven approach helped her reclaim form in junior year and maintain a top‑10 national ranking.

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Real‑world applicability: from MIT labs to Apple’s software teams

Montgomery will join Apple’s software development team in Austin, Texas, as a front‑end engineer working on accessibility features for iOS. The transition is logical: Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines stress the same blend of visual design, interaction fidelity, and performance constraints that Montgomery practiced in Coelho’s studio.

Key transferable skills include:

• Prototyping at speed – rapid iteration cycles on physical devices translate to fast UI mock‑ups using SwiftUI and Xcode Previews.
• Edge‑AI integration – experience deploying TensorFlow Lite models on micro‑controllers equips her to contribute to on‑device machine‑learning features like Live Text and VoiceOver.
• Data‑informed decision making – her habit of logging performance metrics aligns with Apple’s emphasis on analytics‑driven product refinement.

Montgomery also plans to keep competing as an unattached athlete, eyeing marathon training in the long term. Her dual focus on software and sport exemplifies a growing trend: engineers who maintain elite athletic pursuits often bring heightened discipline, time‑management, and a performance‑optimization mindset to their technical roles.

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Lessons for students balancing design, code, and competition

1. Seek interdisciplinary studios early – courses like 4.021 and 4.043 provide a sandbox where software meets materiality. The hands‑on experience accelerates learning curves that pure coding classes cannot.
2. Treat setbacks as data points – Montgomery’s injury period became a case study in how physiological stress impacts cognitive output. Documenting these variables can reveal actionable insights.
3. Build a portfolio that tells a story – blank‑scope is more than a demo; it’s a narrative of how a CS background can power interactive hardware. Recruiters respond to projects that illustrate end‑to‑end problem solving.
4. Prioritize recovery – sleep, nutrition, and mental breaks are not optional. Montgomery’s junior‑year turnaround hinged on a disciplined routine that kept her body and mind ready for both labs and lanes.

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Looking ahead

As Montgomery prepares for her final meet at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships, she reflects on a college career that feels like a series of deliberately chosen experiments. “I chose each of the things I did intentionally, so I put my time in things that I’ll carry with me past college,” she says.

Her story underscores a broader truth for MIT students: the most impactful careers often emerge at the intersection of seemingly disparate passions. Whether you are designing an AI‑augmented binocular, sprinting a 800 m race, or coding the next generation of mobile interfaces, the discipline of iterating, measuring, and improving remains the common thread.

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For more on Montgomery’s projects, see the MIT Design Studio showcase and the MIT Athletics track and field page.