Nashville Native, Auburn University graduate with Bachelor’s of Wireless Software Engineering, University of Tennessee graduate with Master’s of Computer Science

I attended Auburn University and was initially enrolled as an Industrial and Systems Engineering student. Encouraged to participate in a co-operative work study program to boost my resume, I interned for an automotive manufacturing company. After two work semesters and 2.5 years, I was feeling restless and felt that the work and responsibilities in an ISE career lacked the creativity and challenge I sought when I first pursued the engineering profession. The most significant takeaway from my time working in manufacturing engineering was the handful of times I was exposed to the software process behind some of the automation and robotics in the plant’s assembly lines. A combination of my experience with this internship and a desire to take on a new challenge led me to change my major to Wireless Software Engineering as I began my junior year.

At the time, Auburn’s Wireless Engineering degree was the only one of its kind in the country, and offered two potential specialities, either a Hardware or Software option. The Wireless Software Engineering curriculum builds upon a solid foundation in mathematics, science, and electrical or software engineering fundamentals to introduce wireless communications theories, devices, circuits, systems, networks, standards, management, and applications. Design experience is interwoven throughout the curriculum by introducing basic design concepts early, emphasizing hands-on design experiences in the laboratories, including effective use of computers and other modern engineering tools, and culminating with a capstone design project in the senior year. I believe my degree shared 85% of the Curriculum with Software engineering and the remaining 15% was all Electrical Engineering course work. With absolutely no background in programming or computer science, the learning curve was steep at first, and I feel like was able to step up to the challenge.

Graduate School and Recent Experience

After graduating in 2016, I continued my education as a candidate for a Master’s in Computer Science with coursework focusing in data science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. During my time at UTK I worked as a teaching assistant for two courses, Systems Programing and Software Engineering. Systems Programming is a required Undergraduate course teaching principles and methodologies of operating systems with intense focus on biweekly labwork. Software Engineering is an elective computer science course focusing on team oriented, iterative, software development projects.

Additionally, my advisor, Dr. Audris Mockus, connected me to two research opportunities at Oak Ridge National Lab. The first of which involved assisting an engineer working with Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME now called ES3M) with his data restructuring efforts for the Department of Energy’s climate model still in active development after its creation over 20 years ago. The second opportunity was a digital archeology project for the ESTSC and OSTI, where I validated and audited the Department of Energy’s warehouse of old scientific software packages in preparation for digitization and open source sharing through the new initiative DOECode.