Summer internships give students a chance to put their UTCS education to the test in real world situation, sometimes created just for them. Many students take advantage of these opportunities to make valuable industry connections, earn enough money to pay their tuition and pick up in-demand job training that isn't available through college courses.
To find out more about internship opportunities, please contact Career Services 471-6700 PAI 5.03, or visit the College of Natural Sciences Career Services page
Read how a few enterprising students found a summer position and what advice they have for you:
Where was the Co-op? Austin, Texas
What were some of your projects/responsibilities? Creating WebSphere Web Service Security test cases with Java, JUnit, ANT, and XML.
Who did you work with? I worked with a mixture of co-ops, interns, and regular full time employees.
After 5 o'clock? On nights and weekends I played pool, chess, and poker - sometimes with fellow workers, sometimes not.
Things I learned along the way I learned that nothing educates like hands on experience. Computer Science jobs require very dynamic thinkers because the technology formats can change weekly/daily. I learned how to learn very fast and become part of a world changing team. I learned that the field is competitive, friendly, fun, and challenging.
Future plans? I plan to graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science while working in part-time positions and then I plan to work full time for two years. While working, I'll pursue a Master's degree in CS or Math or an MBA paid for by the company I work for. One day, I plan to become a manager or software architect. I will pursue excellence and help create outstanding software, and become the CEO of the company I work for or start my own company.
Words of wisdom Maintain good grades and work on open source projects. Understand either Java or C++ very well. For interviews, know algorithms and have your brain ready for problem solving. Network as much as possible while on the job and learn a little from everyone each day to enrich your knowledge database. Don't get drowned by the TLAs!
Where was the internship? Austin
What were some of your projects/responsibilities? I worked on a content management system for the Tivoli Support team.
Who did you work with? I worked mostly with full time people and rarely with my fellow interns.
After 5 o'clock? I did not participate in many group outings, only occasional meetings for Future Blue.
Things I learned along the way What did you learn about the field of Computer Sciences? I learned that there are many different opportunities in computer science. But no matter what field you decide to go into, you are guaranteed a challenging atmosphere.
Future plans? I plan to attend graduate school when I graduate in either Artificial Intelligence or Human Computer Interaction.
Words of wisdom Do not be afraid to dabble in new areas. This internship has greatly expanded my computer science knowledge. I did not know what to expect when I started this internship but I took a chance and I am very fortunate for that opportunity. It is also very important that students are willing to adapt to whatever is given to them.
Where was the internship? Redmond, WA
What were some of your projects/responsibilities? I worked at Microsoft for 2 summers as a Program Manager intern. The first summer, I worked in the Outlook team and was given responsibility for designing an internal tool for making use of archived emails from Outlook help listservs. The second summer, I worked in the VoIP team of WindowsCE. I was given responsibility for designing a full end-to-end solution for recording and using data from WinCE cell phones using VoIP to reproduce problems. I also worked with a Development intern on the team to implement it. MS Program Managers are typically responsible for designing a particular feature of a product and write various specification documents for the development team to use to implement the feature.
Who did you work with? My first summer, I worked with many full-time employees across the company to help me design the tool as it used several MS products. My second summer, I worked with a fellow intern, but I also worked with full-time employees to gather input for the design and to review the specification documents I wrote.
After 5 o'clock? There are LOTS of things to do in Seattle: great scenery, lots of cool little coffee shops, markets, etc. Microsoft HR plans big intern events where you get free food, beer, and t-shirts. The UT recruiter also typically plans a UT vs A&M softball game. I also played in the intern puzzle day and the intern game (which is a 48-hour event where you solve puzzles leading you around Washington state). Microsoft HR will also pay for any event that 100-150 interns will attend (one summer they paid for 150 interns to see Spiderman 2 on the opening day because one intern suggested it to them). Microsoft also has an intern listserv, so interns plan tons of outings amongst themselves: poker nights, game nights, trips to the opera, Mt Rainier hikes, etc). As an intern, you also get to attend the company picnic, and if you are a graduating senior, you usually get to go to a BBQ at Bill Gates' house (yes, Bill Gates attends, as well as all the VPs).
Things I learned along the way I learned a lot about Microsoft software development cycle, as well as about Voice over IP.
Future plans? I'm currently pursuing Master of Public Policy degree at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Words of wisdom Make sure you get your resume to the recruiters at the Career Expo. Also be open to different positions, as a recruiter may suggest a different one for you: Program Manager, Software Development Engineer, or Software Development Engineer in Test. In MS interviews, don't be afraid to debate with the interviewer. They want to see if you're confident about your ideas. Also be sure to ask questions if they give you a problem in the interview. They often withhold vital information at first.
Where was the internship? Houston, TX
What were some of your projects/responsibilities? I had to write a GUI app in C# to assist geoscientists with access to their data on the UNIX side. Things I learn through this project: C#, querying Active Directory(data management), seamless UNIX access. My second assignment included writing a script in Perl to watch for changes in Active Directory's GPOs (Group Policy Objects). Thing I learned: Perl, Authentication in UNIX. Currently they got me working on writing queries for global databases. Thing I'm learning: SQL, Basic. Also, I learned a lot about computer infrastructure of a large company like ExxonMobil. I got to see how they manage such large environment and all the hoops they have to jump through to roll out any updates.
Who did you work with? In my building there is about 16 interns (only in IT, I think there is about 30 IT interns total), I am the only one on my floor though. I think the whole program includes about 150 interns, located in all the different Houston locations. I was really surprised to see how much people care about my progress here. I had a lot of resources available to me at any given time. I was receiving really good guidance on all my projects. About once a week all the different EM companies (such as development, production, IT) had "Lunch & Learn"s for us. They would give us an overview of what their company does. I found those to be very educational in term of learning about oil business. We went to a lot of field trips to different ExxonMobil facilities, such as refinery, gas plants and even got to fly a helicopter to an offshore platform in Galveston. You get to meet a lot of interns from different groups at Lunch & Learns and field trips.
After 5 o'clock? Activities planned by Exxon: Meet and Greet at Jillian's, refinery tour, Exxon facilities overview tour, meeting IT vice president, tour to offshore platform, trip to Kemah, Museum of Natural Sciences, Astro's game, and the EM Gas plant. The interns planned other small activities, which included renting a boat on Lake Conroe, visiting NASA, ice skating, shark fishing in Galveston ... and a lot of other socials like dinners and movies ... you make a lot of good friends.
Future plans? Getting my masters.
Words of wisdom You'd think ExxonMobil has nothing to offer for CS majors...you'd be surprised. I learned a lot of different languages and got an excellent corporate experience that will definitely help me decide what I want to do with my life for the next few years.
Where was the internship? Austin, TX
What were some of your projects/responsibilities? Research and development of an automated theorem proving system for NI's graphical data-flow programming language, LabVIEW/G. I used the incredible Boyer-Kaufmann-Moore theorem prover, ACL2 (developed here at UT!) as the core and developed (with Jacob Kornerup, Jeff Kodosky, and Paul Austin) the following:
This project afforded me, both as firsts in my life, the opportunity to go present my work at conferences and file a U.S. patent. It has been a true joy, both rewarding and exciting.
Who did you work with? I worked mostly with 3 full-timers (Jacob Kornerup, who earned his PhD at UT under Misra in 1997 and has been my lead advisor, Jeff Kodosky, the inventor of LabVIEW, and Paul Austin, one of the lead language and compiler designers). NI makes it very easy to interact with other interns though, and has lots of really fun events allowing interns to mix and mingle. What made this internship especially wonderful was how kind and humble everyone at NI is. As an example, Jeff Kodosky, one of the co-founders and the inventor of the programming language, sits, not in an office, but at an open desk in the midst of all of us. It is open-air here, everyone talks to everyone else, and the whole group is excited to be working on such interesting problems. The enthusiasm is contagious!
After 5 o'clock? A lot of the out-of-town interns planned really nice events, though I was too busy to really participate. I mostly worked on the prover around the clock, it is just such an exciting project, I didn't want to take a break!
Things I learned along the way Before delving into technical matters, I think the biggest thing I've learned is what an incredible impact the design of a novel technology (in this case, a new, interesting programming language) can have on a scientific discipline. LabVIEW is amazing and has bridged an important gap for many scientists, and I find it very encouraging for myself and my fellow young computer scientists to see that we really can make something that is both intrinsically interesting (thus fun to work on), and has a positive effect upon the world by helping others pursue their scientific interests in a substantial way. We are, I believe, driven by curiosity and the insatiable appetite for beautiful puzzles - what a dream it is to work on puzzles whose solutions also happen to help others!
From the technical side, I learned so much about the logistics involved in trying to automate theorem proving in first order logic. I was able to learn much about ACL2, modeling the semantics of programming languages, proving theorems, and computational logic in general. In the middle of my project, I was given the free time to write a first-order theorem prover (mostly in harmony with the Argonne paradigm) in applicative common lisp from scratch - implementing different term indexing and unification algorithms, variants of clausal resolution, paramodulation, and term orderings such as Knuth-Bendix (KBO) and Recursive Path (RPO), etc. really helped me learn by diving head first into these fascinating subjects and getting my hands dirty. The flexibility of the internship also afforded me the opportunity to work on implementing quantifier elimination algorithms for different decidable/model-complete theories (like linear arithmetic, real closed fields, etc.) which was wonderfully beneficial for me educationally. Overall, it has felt like an exciting combination of interesting pure math and computer sciences.
Future plans? I'm spending my final year as an undergrad (starting September 1st, 2006) at the Mathematical Research Institute in the Netherlands, in Utrecht and Nijmegen, Holland, working on a one-year masters in mathematical logic. I plan for my thesis to be on extensions of Hilbert's Tenth Problem over algebraic number fields and how one can approach the Diophantine problem for number fields from the perspective of Galois connections (I call this ``Galois Computability''). I hope then to go on to work on my PhD in a similar area where logic, algebra, and number theory overlap in a pretty way and their combined automation is an exciting challenge.
Words of wisdom Well, first, I don't think I am very qualified to give anyone advice. But, if I must, I would encourage you to do an internship at NI! I am serious about that, but on a more general note, I would say find an area of computer sciences that fascinates you, devote yourself to it, and go actively looking for an internship revolving around your subject of choice. I became fascinated by automated theorem proving (thanks to Boyer, Kaufmann, and Moore), and asked NI for a position to work on ATP when I interviewed with them. I know of another UT CS senior, Dan Brown, who just took the same approach with a Haskell-based development company in Ohio for this past summer, and he has been wonderfully productive and inspired. I think finding an area in which you believe you can make an impact and focusing on it as much as you can is very helpful in landing an internship in which your project excites you. I believe impassioned, intrinsic interest in a project to be the key ingredient in constructing a potent brew of happiness and extreme productivity (much more than, say, the rewards of money or esteem).
Where was the internship? Mountain View, CA
What were some of your projects/responsibilities? I had to write test cases that would test as much of the feature's functionality as possible.
Who did you work with? I was the only intern in my immediate team. Our team was the Adwords API Quality Assurance team and each one of us "owned" a feature that he/she wrote tests for.
After 5 o'clock? At night I either went clubbing or attended various planned events such as board gaming nights that took place once a week, etc. During the weekends my friends and I would either go to San Francisco or go surfing or camping. However there were several events organized by the internship program such as picnics, an entire puzzle solving day, bowling, ice cream events, etc.
Things I learned along the way ... I learned to look at problems also from a practical point of view. Sometimes a solution that is linear in assymptotic notation has a huge constant that makes it not applicable and an assymptotically "slower" solution would be much more viable. Similar problems are encountered when you deal with memory usage, network requests, version control, etc.
Future plans? My future plans are to go to grad school.
Words of wisdom Go to Career Services and have the resume reviewed (it made a huge difference for me). Apply for as many internships as possible. (The law of large numbers just works). Google was my #1 choice, however, I failed to get an offer from #2 and #3 :)
Good story for the grandkids Google offers free food to the employees...and it's so good and plentiful that I would rather eat there than in restaurants. I totally forgot about such things as grocery shopping or junk food. One day I went to this restaurant with a friend and after we ate we started to leave, completely forgetting that we had to actually pay for it! The waiter had to run after us out of the restaurant and tell us that we hadn't paid for the meal. At that point in time, I was having the most embarrassing moment of my life...now it feels just funny when I think about it :)
Where was the internship? Houston, Texas
What were some of your projects/responsibilities? I was in charge of a project specific to a team within the company that I was heading from start to end.
Who did you work with? I worked with a team of full-time people and I had a mentor and supervisor who guided me through all the steps.
After 5 o'clock? We had a lot of intern activities that were planned in the evenings and weekends, such as volunteering at the Houston Zoo or going bowling.
Things I learned along the way I learned how to apply computer sciences in a setting that actually makes a difference in the world around us.
Future plans? I would like to do some research combining the fields of Geology and Computer Science.
Words of wisdom? Internships are definitely something that you need to go out and find, they do not come knocking at your door and with the number of internships out there, it is silly to let such wonderful opportunities pass by.
Good story for the grandkids I had the opportunity to visit two refineries and an oil drilling site (I got to wear those hard hats)! The company definitely gave the interns hands on experience in the entire energy business!
