What It’s Really Like as a MathWorks Intern
By Kerri, recruiter
At MathWorks we regularly give interns a chance to gain valuable experience, build their skills, and even have fun. Before they completed their time with us and returned to school, we asked three of our summer 2020 interns to describe their experiences—and the benefits of—working in different areas of the company.
Eli enjoyed gaining practical MATLAB knowledge:
My name is Eli, and I am a rising junior majoring in computer science at UMass Amherst. I grew up in Natick, Massachusetts, about a mile away from the MathWorks Apple Hill campus.
This summer I’m working remotely with the Editor Tools team on a variety of projects mainly focusing on accessibility and customer-facing issues. My work relates to interactive outputs in Live Editor, with tasks that make them more customizable and efficient.
This internship has exposed me to software engineering in a fully immersive and impactful way. I’m working hands on with MATLAB.
Dasha appreciated being part of the team even while working remotely:
My name is Dasha, and I’m a rising senior at UMass Amherst studying computer science and mathematics. I’m from Waltham, Massachusetts.
This summer I have been working with the App Designer team at MathWorks to design and implement new features as well as enhance existing features in App Designer. I’ve gained experience working with a large and complex code base, and learned about the entire software development cycle, including writing specs, developing code, and working with the continuous integration test system.
Even though the internship is remote, I feel like part of the App Designer team because I attend daily stand-up meetings, team meetings, and design reviews. I was able to meet many of the other interns through numerous events, including games, virtual lunches, and the hackathon. I’ve already learned so much at MathWorks about what it’s like to be a software developer, and I’m excited to learn even more!
Cody applied lessons he learned in class to a real-world project:
My name is Cody, and I’m a rising senior at UMass Amherst majoring in computer science. I’m from the town of West Hartford, Connecticut, and that’s also where I’ve been working from this summer.
During my time with MathWorks, I’ve been working with the Stateflow team to model finite automata and their interactions. Throughout the project, I’ve learned about the formal mathematical definitions of automata. I’ve also applied knowledge gained in my discrete math and formal language theory classes at UMass. My project has dealt with everything from iterating through a machine on inputs to creating visualizations of the automata graph and implementing algorithms such as minimization.
Throughout the internship, I have been participating in sprints as a member of the Stateflow development team. From attending daily standups to performing design reviews, I’ve gained the valuable experiences of both learning the software engineering practices used in industry and improving my communication skills by working remotely with a team.
