Code Meets Cancer Research: Kelly Putnam '24's Internship at The Jackson Laboratory
Written on September 24th, 2023 by Naser
Photo by Kelly Putnam ‘24
This post is part of a spotlight series highlighting the work of exceptional students and alumni. The series aims to facilitate knowledge sharing on topics such as internships, jobs, entrepreneurship, and graduate school.
Today, I have the pleasure of talking to Kelly Putnam ‘24, who will tell us about her recent experience as a Software Engineering intern at The Jackson Laboratory.
Naser: Can you tell us about your role and responsibilities during your tech internship?
I was a software engineering intern at The Jackson Laboratory this summer, and basically worked on one project throughout the 10 weeks. This project was to implement a web page that, when given search inputs of disease indications and gene variants, would return a ranked table of therapies that matched the search inputs. The ranking was based on a lot of factors, so most of the first part of my internship was strictly backend. Using a MySQL database of the information that employees at The Jackson Lab were constantly collecting, I basically sorted through data, grouped it based off of different characteristics to try and see which made the most sense for the ranking, and finally, for the second half of my internship, was working more on the front end to put this information in a readable and dynamic table on a web page, which was integrated with a Grails/Gradle application. I learned so much about the entire software engineering process here, especially working remotely using git as I was constantly checking over my work and working in tandem with two great mentors, who are full time employees. Throughout the process, I presented where I was in the project with demos to the other employees, who were giving feedback and changing suggestions as the summer went on. At the end of the internship, we had a great and functional product that I’m sure will be continuously workshopped and eventually very helpful!
Naser: How did you find this internship? And why did you choose it?
I actually found this internship in the job listings of Colby’s job/internship connections website, Handshake. I entered my major, interests, and the kind of work I was looking for, and The Jackson Labs (especially since they are in partnership with Colby) really stood out to me. I thought the idea of working in cancer research was something I never thought I would be able to do as a software engineer, so this really drew me to the internship. I was also super grateful that the internship offered both remote and in-person work for the summer. However, the emphasis the internship program put on the mentor-mentee relationship that would guide this summer project was probably the main reason I chose this specific program.
Naser: Can you tell us about the interview process? And how did you prepare for it?
Unlike most of the interviews I’ve done for software engineering, this one didn’t include a formal technical interview— the interview was a Zoom call where the interviewers went over my resume with me and asked questions about my experience with coding— most specifically about my course load. Since it was a software engineering internship, they asked me a lot about the Software Engineering class I took at Colby: if I had learned/worked with HTML and/or CSS, my experience in both the front and back end, what frameworks I had used such as Grails or Gradle (since that was what they use). More broadly, they asked me about which data structures I tended to lean towards, what language I was the most comfortable in, and whether I was open to learning a new language and if I thought I would pick up on it quickly. I assumed this interview, like most in this area, would include a technical interview, so I did a lot of leetcode beforehand (which I’m glad I did anyways— it’s super helpful as a refresher). I also looked through my course notes quickly as a refresher as well.
Naser: How did the internship align with your academic studies at Colby, and did it provide any unique perspectives or insights?
My entire background in software engineering was completely due to CS321 at Colby— otherwise, I would have had no experience at all in HTML or CSS, would not have understood the Agile method, and, most importantly, I would have had to completely teach myself GitHub and using the terminal for GitHub from scratch. I would say that knowing terminal commands and how to run most things from the terminal was something that was invaluable in my internship experience. One thing I noticed in my internship was how crucial CI/CD testing is to the software engineering process. This honestly consumed most of my time in the beginning of my internship, as I realized I needed 100% coverage of my code and needed to adjust to the new Spock framework of testing. Obviously, this got easier and I learned functional as well as unit testing, but I never realized how important this was to ensure a smooth user experience.
Naser: What tips would you give students interested in doing an internship in the future but not sure where to start? You can mention any details that you like, including websites and other sources.
Being a computer science student from Colby College opens you up to so many opportunities, and I think many companies or programs are thrilled to have someone with a liberal arts education as opposed to someone who has only been studying computer science in their time at college. I would say that an important thing to stress on your resume, cover letters, and interviews would be how broad your knowledge is! Being able to communicate with people who aren’t necessarily well versed in technical jargon is such an invaluable skill, since most of what software engineering is would be working with a client who is hiring you because they don’t know much about it, and your presentations and communications need to be understandable. Colby students are, as a rule, so good at this, so it’s something super important to emphasize in your job search. I would also recommend taking advantage of DavisConnects and having meetings with the wonderful staff there— they want to help you!
