My name is Shriya Koneru and I am a senior studying Biocomputational Engineering (BCE), a program offered by the University of Maryland, College Park’s (UMD) A. James Clark School of Engineering at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG). I’m actually not local to Montgomery County, like many of my classmates. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pa. and chose to study at UMD for its proximity to many government facilities, specifically the NIH. I came into undergrad initially as a bioengineering major, and immediately upon reading the BIOE website about a new biocomputational engineering major being offered at USG, I adjusted my classes to align with the program’s requirements.
The added computer science, statistics and mathematics components of the major is what made it so enticing to me to make the switch. And so, after a year-and-a-half of taking classes at UMD’s main campus in College Park, I transferred into the BCE program at USG. I am part of the second cohort in this relatively new program, which has been a very unique and rewarding experience. When I first began, the program was essentially just starting up and the cohort sizes were smaller, enabling us students to be closer with one another, as well as our professors.
Outside of academics, I am kept busy by my involvement with Control AI (a club BCE students started on the USG campus), Alpha Omega Epsilon (a half-social, half-professional engineering sorority at UMD on the College Park campus), being a peer mentor through Women In Engineering, and as a blogger on USG’s Around the Grove student blog.
This summer, I had an incredible experience interning at Captech Ventures as a data engineer. The goal of the internship was to mimic a real client experience and project, so I was able to explore all aspects of data cleaning, moving, and analyzing on my own. Through this, I learned an incredible amount, including the fact that I love it!
Prior to that experience, I interned with the Frederick National Laboratory-National Cancer Institute. This opportunity taught me so much and I am extremely grateful for the help and guidance I received in the BCE program in order to make the internship possible. In this position, I worked independently to update the system the lab uses to create statistical processing and control charts automatically. Prior to this position, I also held a micro-internship with Northrop Grumman in the spring of 2022, as well as an internship with Engineers Without Borders in the summer of 2021. Each of these opportunities have allowed me to learn about research, the engineering process, and what my own likes and dislikes are within different fields and positions.
From each of these amazing experiences, I have learned that I would like to pursue a career in data engineering. I have a standing job offer from a prominent technology consulting company working as a data engineer that will begin at the end of the summer of 2024. I graduate in December 2023, and have decided to use the time in between to travel and complete some certificates in data, cloud computing, and AWS concepts. The idea of working towards a masters degree and/or MBA is also something that I am strongly considering to allow me to work upwards to a lead or managerial position.