Ridwan Amure, a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and a graduate researcher at COSMOS, recently completed his summer internship at Meta (parent company of Facebook). This exciting opportunity allowed him to expand his expertise, gain hands-on industry experience, and collaborate with leading professionals in the field. Let’s take a closer look at Ridwan’s internship journey and the valuable insights he gained during his time at Meta.
Where did you complete your internship, and what was the primary focus of your projects?
Meta, Worked on Recommendation Systems (Machine Learning Model development and Data Pipelines))
What skills did you develop, what challenges did you face, and what was your most valuable takeaway from the experience?
I worked on state of the art systems and hence developed quality machine learning skills. I worked on an end-to-end project in recommendation systems. Challenges: Getting up to speed with internal tools and infrastructures. My most valuable takeaway is that it felt good to be back in a production environment working on a product that is being used by billions of people.
In what ways did your COSMOS research experience prepare you for your internship?
My work with graphs(networks) helped very much in quickly understanding the connectivity between users. This is quite helpful in developing models for social media applications.
How has your internship experience enhanced your current work and research at COSMOS?
It has changed my perspective about work and I am looking forward to more.
How did your internship broaden your perspective on the type of research conducted at COSMOS?
At COSMOS we worked from outside of these social media platforms to understand how connections between users lead to different social phenomena. It was good to see how those connections can be used for other purposes as well.
What advice would you offer to fellow COSMOS researchers preparing for future internships?
Be steadfast. Prepare hard. Do the hard work, learn as much as you can. Know your research and own it.
Share a memorable story or moment from your internship that stood out to you.
A memorable moment was when I had the opportunity to present a state of the art research paper to the entire team/org. Then suddenly, I realized it was being broadcast live on the internal portal which is accessible to everyone!
If you had to describe your internship experience in one word, what would it be?
Splendid