By Paige Drummond, Contributing Writer
Two Gettysburg College computer science students presented the research and projects they did over their summer internships to their peers from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24 in Glatfelter Hall.
The two presenting students were Kris Nguyen, ’27 and Damian Vu, ’26, both of whom are computer science majors and did work with technology companies over the summer.
Both of them followed a similar structure in their presentations, as they both detailed the way in which they got their internships, the research and projects they did, where they found themselves being challenged, and the outcomes of their work.
Nguyen presented first, sharing his experience working on the modernization of OpenMRS through the utilization of artificial intelligence, while working remotely on campus. In his research, he stated that he, “made the important decision to split it into three tiers.”
“The first tier has 46 screens and analysis, so this is the tier that I would be focusing on and trying to accomplish migrating from the legacy in the whole internship,” Nguyen said during his presentation when discussing his work on modernizing OpenMRS. “And then the second tier and the third tier are like inventory. So, I still run an analysis but not running deeply; a shallow analysis.”
Vu presented second, describing his time over the summer interning for re:Members, formerly known as Billhighway, as a software engineer intern. He described some of his work, “At the beginning of every week, the pipeline runs a migration test, which means we know the data from the previous one, and then, coming up, during the week, we have scheduled one on the weekdays and anytime the pipeline had a bug, it was our job to figure out the solution.”
Vu also described his time as working remotely for the company, and in describing his application process, he discussed how he followed up with members of the company from his application the year prior, as how he discovered an opening for the position he eventually held on Handshake, leading to him successfully securing the internship.
When reflecting on his major takeaway from his internship, Nguyen stated, “Even without a finished product, I came away understanding legacy organization, proven development, and how a software team turns a massive problem into a structured, achievable goal.”
