I am part of the back-end team of the
project, which helps develop the algorithms to do the actual analysis of the
data. I am not really interested in Biology, but the technical aspect of the
project seemed interesting and a great chance to learn more technological
skills. Going into the first week, I had a general idea of what the work was going
to be like, but only a very general idea. Fortunately, the project had a clear
goal, and I found a good work “stride” by the end of my first week working. I
have limited knowledge of the field of biology, but the technical challenges
that pop up from analyzing data and building websites is something I can easily
contribute towards. There is more so a typical work cycle rather than a typical
work day or week. A good amount of time is spent talking and planning about
what an algorithm should do and how to do it. Only after a good amount of
planning, the code is then written up. The biggest time sink is then testing
the code, fixing bugs, and then integrating the code with the front end so that
the results can be shown on the website. The cycle then repeats if a task is
done or if there needs to be modifications to the whole task as most likely
some part of the task was more complex than expected.
This project was a great
experience for me. It helped give experience in bridging the gap of what I have
learned as a Computer Science major and other fields that are increasingly
becoming reliant on technology. The problems I had to solve while coding, testing,
and planning were interesting, and it was not simply easy grunt work. The most
interesting part is learning how to manage the data that we have and solving
the problems that come with the large amounts of data that has to be processed.
The experience was invaluable, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time working in this
project.
