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Andy Friedl

Andy Friedl

Director, Swyfft | Analytics, data science | Class of 2007

How exactly it started, Andy Friedl can't say for sure.

One minute, he and Everitt Lab study buddy Sean, worn out from hour upon hour of ECE 515 homework, were chugging 32-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew hoping to stay awake.

The next, they were breaking into song in their student office:

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!

If you’re happy and you know it, and you really want to show it;

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!

“For the rest of the semester, we’d make it a nightly event to go get food, our Mountain Dew, do our homework and randomly start singing that same song at some point during the evening,” says Swyfft’s director of analytics and data science ((BS ’07/electrical engineering, MS ’09/electrical and computer engineering).

“I know it’s kind of odd but it’s a really fond memory I have of the time.”