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A Brotherhood for Life.

Internship Highlight–Steven Tra

Posted by Christopher Lester

Hello CSS Community,

My name is Steven Tra, and I am a senior majoring in Computer Science with an intended minor in Mathematics. This past summer I interned at the Engineering Research and Development Center’s Geospatial Research Laboratory (ERDC-GRL) in Alexandria, VA. This internship was offered to me in association with the SMART Scholarship, a DoD scholarship that provides full tuition and summer internships to students majoring in STEM. Overall, this internship exposed me to the areas of data science and machine learning, and I plan to explore these areas further in my studies and future career opportunities.

My internship started on May 29th and lasted ten weeks, officially ending on August 3rd. On my first day, I was assigned a mentor, and he allowed me to choose from three different research projects that I could pursue. Although I cannot describe explicitly what I did for my project due to security reasons, I can disclose that I worked on a large-scale data project. Essentially, I created a computer application that could generate a large amount of random data; this data could be very simple (i.e. contain very few fields/characteristics) or very complex (i.e. contain dozens of fields/characteristics). Once the data was generated, I used it as training data for a neural network. The neural network used a complex machine learning algorithm which allowed me to make predictions on incoming test data sets. The results for my network were satisfactory overall; I was able to accurately predict 78.41% of the one million test data examples. From this internship, I learned more about best practices in data science and machine learning, which are two of the most rapidly growing fields in computer science right now. I also learned about my interests and preferences as a researcher and employee.

As a recipient of the SMART Scholarship from the DoD, I am required to complete internships with ERDC-GRL until I finish my undergraduate degree. Thus, I have confirmed that I will be returning to their facility next summer. However, the experience I have had so far will prepare me for the rigor of working in the industry as well as any other post-graduate endeavors.

CSS Team Leader & Webmaster,
Steven Tra

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Scholar Testimonials

Juan Roa
Alumni

College Success Scholars was the first thing I knew about at Maryland. I came in not knowing what a bachelor’s degree was, what I wanted to study, or even how to get a degree. All I knew was that I wanted to succeed and work as hard as I could to be the first in my family to get a college degree. Through CSS, I not only was able to learn about how to succeed in college, but most importantly, make friends in order for my experience to not be as daunting. Through Dr. Lester’s unconditional mentorship and support, even when I did not have a dollar for textbooks, I double majored, minored, came out with a full-time job and in the evenings am in the Public Policy Master’s Program. I like to measure my success not by what I have been able to acquire through my education, but the number of lives I am now able to serve as an example for, as well as the students I now mentor based on my past experiences. Thank you CSS and Dr. Lester for believing in me.

Juan Roa
Minor in International
Development and
Conflict Management

2016 MPP Candidate
Education Policy and
International Development
University of Maryland,
School of Public Policy

Head of Development
and Communications
Spanish Education
Development (SED)
Center, Washington, DC

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