One of the chapter's goals is to educate and inspire the next generation of technical professionals. The chapter started the Student Intern Presentation Showcase (SIPS) several years ago to do just that. SIPS is an opportunity offered by sponsors in the chapter in which summer interns can practice their presentation skills and demonstrate their technical prowess.
The August showcase allowed interns to present their summer projects in front of a diverse audience. Five companies (Belay Technologies, Clarity Business Solutions, Leidos, Praxis Engineering and Visionist Inc.) sponsored 16 students to make seven presentations. Students received professional presentation coaching from David Taylor, Lohfeld Consulting, in three separate sessions before the final presentation. More than 50 people witnessed the presentations, including three judges from sponsor organizations: Joseph Karolchik, Nteligen; Maria Jones, Calibyr; and Ryan Hendrickson, Pointer Technologies, and the chapter's timekeeper, Catherine Kruder, KruTech.
All presentations were excellent. It took the judges over an hour to deliberate and select the winners. All interns received a Certificate of Participation from Lohfeld Consulting for completing the Presentation Skills Training Course.
The chapter awarded three cash prizes: Best Presentation, Best Technical Project and Best Overall. The money will be used as a scholarship toward college expenses. The prize was $500 for each student per winning team.
The winners were:
Best Presentation - Visionist: Leah Ball, Daniel Chung, Elijah Doyle and Reese Guthier presented "Jimbot," a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot tailored to answer questions about Visionist's HR policies, benefits and other information.
Best Technical - Praxis: Timothy Brimmer and Josiah Lim presented "Face Recognition - Secure Sight ID," a robust face recognition system at a fraction of the typical cost.
Best Overall - Clarity Business Solutions: Caleb Knox and Lanna Ly presented "Semantic Document Search," a documentation-searching application for MongoDB powered by machine learning.
Congratulations to all! A few years ago, chapter members created a trophy called the SIPpy Cup. The winners' names will be inscribed on the trophy. The company sponsoring the winners of the Best Overall prize will keep the trophy for next year.
Thank you to Jessica Morgenstern, Applied Insight LLC, and James Moore, Lockheed Martin, for their outstanding leadership and support of the SIPS 2024 program. Be sure to register your interns for the SIPS 2025 challenge, which will be announced next May.
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