„Looking forward to start my thesis, and graduate“
Mama - that is her first name! - studies Internet Technology and Architecture (ITA) at TU Berlin. She likes Berlin, and she would like to stay after graduation in order to do a PhD. Mama is one of many EIT ICT Labs Master School second year students now in an internship. Mama: „I am with Deutsche Telekom, in a department called BENOCS. I help to optimize internet traffic. More concrete, we are conducting simulations on the BGP protocol. Sometimes I feel lost or confused, because it is so complex what we are doing here.“
Her fellow ITA-student Puneeth is implementing a new TCP/IP reordering algorithm in the Linux kernel, at a Munich company called NetApp. „I am really happy and content with the current work I am doing at NetApp“, he says. „I am working on open source software and I get to tease upon and learn how a company benefits from open source and how the open source community benefits when a company is involved.“
Two other peers, Silver and Patrik, also found interesting internships at resp. Telekom Innovation Laboratories of Deutsche Telekom and the Hasso Plattner Institute. Silver (major in Distributed Systems & Services) designs a solution to predict system faults or faulty behaviour ahead of time. „The idea is to process huge, real-time data streams and produce alarms if any problems are to be expected in the near future“, Silver explains. „I also have to test the fault-tolerance and provide a summary of findings.“ Patrik (major in Human-Computer Interaction Design) does „some cool things with body-muscles“. At this stage doesn’t want to say too much about it though.
How does your current internship add to your learning experience in Innovation & Entrepreneurship?
„My internship is solely techology-oriented but I have been talking to start-ups that do data streaming“, says Silver. „The aim of these interviews is to understand the market and industry needs for these kinds of solutions.“
Patrik: „The things I'm working on now are research-orentied. I would prefer to see more of commercially applicability.“
„I noticed that in the past few years Google has contributed immensely to the TCP/IP layer in Linux“, adds Puneeth. „The open source community or another company can take this up, improve it furthermore and contribute it back to the community . This, in a way creates a kind of competition or prestige, which is a great way for innovation.“
Mama: „I have a supervisor for my Innovation and Entrepreneurship thesis. He is giving me some feedbacks, providing datas regarding financials and the market, and explaining many frameworks.“
Any discoveries so far?
„I created a test environment for the stream processing engine process. Currently I am preparing test data for the predictive algorithm“, according to Silver. „I worked as a programmer before and I definitely see some differences compared to the data engineer profession. When working with big-data, the feedback loop can be much longer so it is more important to clearly define your goals beforehand because processing can take time. As a programmer, you can write unit-tests to guide you throughout the day and making a code-change has instant effect. Working with big-data technologies, however, requires time and persistence - planning is therefore more important.“
Mama: „I have learnt about some programming languages I didnt know yet, and about tools for simulation and configuration. Now I learn how to structure my ideas and how to read scientific papers. That is very helpful for my technical thesis!“
Puneeth: „Open source software is a great opportunity for startups. They don't need to hire developers and need not worry about creating new software for their products. They rather use the open source software available which is up-to-date and well-maintained. This is especially important for startups because, in the initial phase, they don't have the luxury to hire too much of manpower to develop their own software.“
What do you like about your internship?
„I like my team. We are a diverse group of 12 persons“, Mama said. „I managed that the team changed the language of their weekly meeting (to english, red.). What I don’t like is that I have lost my way several times, because the building is huge, and it is really difficult to find the right corridors here!“
Patrik likes how he gets to use many skills in a practical sense during a longer project. „I have more control over things and can do them the way I want. Oh, and there are no exams, that is also good!“
Looking forward to something in particular?
Mama: „I have to make the first presentation of my technical thesis very soon, and then I can register it...“
Silver: „I'm looking forward to seeing all the different parts I have planned come together.“
Puneeth: „Starting my master thesis, making my first contribution to Linux and ... to graduate!“
