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SGX3 Summer Internship Reports: Jackson Thetford

Each year, our Workforce Development team offers summer internships for students interested in developing their gateway development skills. For the summer of 2023, interns were placed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). We will be sharing some of our 2023 student interns' experiences in a series of blog posts entitled SGX3 Summer Internship Reports.

Featured below is SGX3 summer intern Jackson Thetford, a student at the University of Texas at Austin studying Computational Engineering and Biochemistry with a minor in Business.

  • What project(s) are you currently working on this summer during the internship?
    • I am working on developing the current Tapis UI and creating a custom version of the Tapis UI for the SCOPED project (see https://seisscoped.org).
  • What are some of the things you have learned or are learning so far?
    • I have learned about some of the Hugging Face Machine Learning Models and a great bit about JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, React.js and Node.js which I have applied to my work with Tapis UI.
  • What do you hope to finish or accomplish before the end of your internship?
    • I hope to become a better programmer and learn more about software development and operations. Specifically I am interested in the front end of software programs which is something I do not have much experience with from school but have learned a great deal about from my internship so far, which I have really enjoyed.
  • After you finish your degree, what would you like to do next?
    • I am planning to enter industry as of now, but I will be applying to Masters degree programs at various schools as well as I am also very interested in the potential of earning a masters degree in either Biochemical Computational engineering or another computational engineering degree.
  • Are there any ‘aha’ moments you would like to share that have happened during your internship so far?
    • Working with Tapis UI has really solidified the idea of both test driven development and Object oriented Programming. These are both topics I’ve studied throughout my Time at UT, but the practical application of them I’ve experience through this internship has proven to be much more challenging and effective.
  • Have you had any fun outings during your internship with fellow interns or visited parts of Austin yourself?
    • I go to college here and have been in Austin for the last 3 years so the city isn’t new to me, but I have really enjoyed meeting my fellow interns and helping them get acclimated as newcomers to the city.

Learn more about the SGX3 Summer Internship program. We encourage those interested in participating in future internship cohorts to subscribe to our newsletter for future application announcements.