During Shawn Cheeks summer research experience, he developed a prototype of a mobile weather app. Shawn explains,
“I spent my summer in Boulder, Colorado as an intern at Unidata – a software engineering division of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). As a weather geek and a computer science major, I was looking for an internship that could combine my experience gained as a student with my passion for weather. Unidata was perfect for this, as they create software and manage data specifically for researchers in the atmospheric sciences.
Once I arrived in Boulder and met with the fellow software engineers at Unidata, I discovered that one of the leading factors in the decision to bring me on for the summer was because I had experience in mobile application development, which was a field in which they were looking to expand. As such, I was asked to create a proof-of-concept Android application that would access some of their data products, which I was able to do.
Meanwhile, I was able to work inside an actual software engineering branch of a major research lab, meet leading scientists, engineers, and fellow students in the atmospheric science field, tour graduate schools and meet with professors, and experience a different part of the country. I believe this opportunity has made me not only a better programmer and scientist, but a better person as a whole.”
Read the full article at Unidata website: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/news/entry/summer_intern_shawn_cheeks_debuts