Image by Brooke Coupal Computer science majors Rohan Paranjape, right, and Viktor Akhonen, left, interned with SAIC last summer.
Students are taking the cyberscience skills they learn at UMass Lowell and applying them to real-world challenges alongside industry professionals.
Senior computer science major Rohan Paranjape is one of 13 UMass Lowell undergraduate students who interned last summer with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a global leader in technology integration and a partner in the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC). Over eight weeks, he gained cloud computing skills through his support of Cloud One, a secure cloud platform managed by the U.S. Air Force and used by the Department of Defense to develop, deploy and scale mission-critical digital applications that leverage the latest commercial technologies.
“The internship was beneficial, because it helped solidify the specific job that I want to do,” Paranjape says. “I found that I’m most interested in DevOps/systems engineering, which led me to apply for a position as a systems security engineer at Raytheon.”
Raytheon, a major U.S. defense contractor within RTX Corporation, hired Paranjape for the full-time position, which he is slated to start after Commencement. Paranjape is also scheduled to commission into the Massachusetts Army National Guard as a Cyber Warfare Officer and will be attending the Cyber Basic Officer Leadership Course in Fort Gordon, Georgia. He is currently a part of the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC).
“My experience with CCDC and the SAIC internship, as well as being an ROTC cadet, set me apart when I applied for these roles,” Paranjape says. “If I didn’t go to UMass Lowell, I don’t know where I would be. The opportunities that I’ve had here have been tremendous.”