Looking Back: Student Assistant Christine Matheney Reflects on her Time at NERSC
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August 31, 2009
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Networking: NERSC's David Stewart (right) mentors Christine Matheney (left) |
By Christine Matheney
When I began my first "real job" as a summer student assistant with the networking team at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) a year and a half ago, in June 2008, I was quite apprehensive because I had no idea what I was going to be working on and didn't know anyone.
However, by the second week I was completely comfortable with the environment and all the people I worked with. When I came back to visit that December, my group said that they wanted me back next summer and I enthusiastically agreed.
At NERSC, I've gotten the chance to work on many very cool projects and with some really fun people. I learned how to use and write HTML and VI during one of my projects where I helped design a visual which showed some of the real-time computer usage and computations running at NERSC. I regularly assisted in installing cable that was either for upgrading supercomputers and systems or installing new ones. Another of my tasks this summer was to troubleshoot some network data transfer problems. I made graphs that displayed the packet transfer and the TCP actions, analyzed them and then helped locate the source of the problem.
My official project this summer was to upgrade the office network to 1 gigabit. This project required me to research many aspects and learn many new things about switching. My first task was to research Spanning Tree and learn how it works and why it's used. I did two write-ups about it and read multiple configuration guides and technical documents, so that I could set up, stack, and configure the switches. Additionaly, I was responsible for the physical layout of the upgrade and making sure that the equipment necessary was either present or ordered. Even though I am the youngest and least experienced on the team, with guidance I was easily able to complete the project.
This past year was my senior year in high school, and I had many college and scholarship applications to fill out. On every application I was able to list my work experience as: high school summer intern at NERSC. The experience was invaluable; I was accepted to 82 percent of the colleges I applied to, and received seven different scholarships. Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, gave me a full-tuition scholarship and is where I'll be attending this fall. Currently, my major is Electrical and Computer Engineering with a focus on robotics with a minor in Business Administration, but after two summers at NERSC, I'm starting to see networking as a very possible career path.
It's great how much I've been able to learn from my mentors at NERSC these past two years. Brent Draney, David Stewart, and Jason Lee have shared things with me that it's taken them years to learn, and I know that in my future I'm going to have an advantage over the competition.
Photo Story: Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences Summer Student Program Hosts 35 Participants in 2009
Thirty-five students participated in the Berkely Lab's Computing Sciences Summer Student Program in 2009. Computing Sciences hosts its own Summer Student Program with students from various universities in the United States and abroad. The program gives students an opportunity to gain relevant research experience while pursuing their degree. The students are partnering with one or more staff members on well-defined research projects. Many of their projects, which they develop at the Lab during the 12-week summer program, become the basis for their theses. At the end of the summer, the students will give presentations based on their research findings. For more information on the program, click here.
