Sheila Alemany is an undergraduate student at the School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS), majoring in Computer Science and Math and will be graduating in Spring 2019. In the past, Sheila has been hired for on-campus jobs as Academic Success Initiative (ASI) tutor and SCIS Learning Assistance.
Sheila latest success story is that she got excellent reviews from her supervisors after completing a summer internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. A group of 4 FIU students was accepted into the internship program, but Sheila was the only undergrad. At the end of the summer, MIT Lincoln Laboratory offered her a full-time job, but since Sheila is currently thinking about grad school, she only accepted to go back to MIT for a second internship offer. The MIT Lincoln Laboratory is so impressed with the FIU students’ performance that they have scheduled an Information Session with SCIS to recruit more students.
Regarding my experience at Lincoln Laboratory, I worked in the Cybersecurity division and more specifically, the Cyber Analytics and Decision Systems group. My job title was a “Cyber Analytics and Decision Systems Research Summer Student,” and I was fortunate enough to work on a project that evaluated machine learning techniques that predict cyberattacks. This evaluation was done using an extensive set of metrics. I was able to contribute to these set of metrics by proposing a few new evaluation techniques that use statistical methods, natural language processing, and clustering techniques.
The laboratory, being a Federally-funded research lab, contains work that is very motivating and impactful. Many employees there like to refer MIT Lincoln Lab as the perfect mixture of industry and academia. It was a wonderful learning and working experience, and I loved everything about it. I was fortunate enough to be given a return offer so I’ll be there next summer again before going off to graduate school!
~ Sheila Alemany