INSPIRING INTERNS
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Turing Talent’s New Blog Post Series
Turing Talent’s goal is to develop technical talent in a well-rounded set of skills to perform at their best in industry environments. We do that by combining training designed by industry veterans, mentorship from industry leaders, and a cross-industry peer network. Briefly, we surround our talents with only people who are going to lift them higher.
In the Turing Talent’s inspiring interns blog post series, we recognize new faces in tech and have their inspirational stories in order to encourage all talents. This week, we will host a successful engineer who is pursuing MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Essex: Sumit Sharma. He is also working as a Computer Vision Engineer Intern at Renude. We have asked many questions to him regarding his internship and Turing Talent’s Leadership Program. Let’s get started!
Hello Sumit and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Let’s start with your background, could you tell me about your background please?
My name is Sumit Sharma and I’m from India. I have 7 years of work experience as a DevOps engineer. I started my MSC degree from the University of Essex last year, currently pursuing that in artificial intelligence. And with the help of Turing Talent, I was introduced to Renude Company. Renude is a company which is managing the skin care routines for people. I’m a Computer Vision Engineer intern there. My job is basically to develop machine learning and deep learning-based models to classify the variety of techniques which people have and the severity of acne, as well. It involves a wide variety of image labelling and use of cloud systems. The idea is to appeal to the facility to use mobile applications where they can upload their self-images and all these models should be classified according to their acne problems. And then, they provide some dermatological treatment based on the findings.
Did you have any previous experience before starting the Turing Talent leadership program?
Yeah. As I mentioned before I have 7 years of work experience. I worked for British Telecom indirectly.
How did you find out about this program of Turing Talent?
Basically, from my University I was looking for some part-time jobs there. So, from the university job portal I got to know that there is a form of Turing Talent. They help you to find an internship. I connected with one of your members and they interviewed me. They got to know what I’m looking for and after like 20 days later one of the members approached me and said that we found some job for you which is related to the fields that you are looking for.
Very nice! What were your expectations from this leadership program?
Before starting I really wanted to get to know more about deep learning and computer vision because in my academics I learned a variety of techniques in machine learning and data science. But this is the particular area of interest that really excited me. I just wanted to get to know how industry is doing in this particular area.
What projects did you build/work during your internship?
In my internship, I mainly worked in a labelling job for starting. This is like a 6-month program of internship for me so I completed 2 months as of now. And in these two months, I completed the data pre-processing part where you basically gather the information. Also, I do all sorts of pre-processing tasks, which will be done by some labelling expert. My task was to frame the jobs which will be available to labellers so they can use those jobs and classify the images. Once we get the label images, we will use them for training purposes. The second phase of this internship has started just now.
Which technologies did you use?
I mainly use Python and I work on AWS sage maker, which is a tool for processing image data sets, by using the Cloud Platform because the data set which the company holds is already available on AWS cloud. However, they cannot share their cloud database with other people because of privacy reasons, and that is why I’m being located to a different cloud system and my job is to basically communicate between the primary and secondary cloud. I can say that I mainly use Python and AWS. Also, a variety of deep learning libraries related to Python. They involve TensorFlow Kerris and the visualizations, which include Plotly.
How did the leadership program contribute to your long-term career goals?
As I mentioned, I just had some introduction in my academic time that there’s something called Computer Vision and deep learning, I did a couple of projects there. When I joined this internship, it gave me a sort of vision that I can make my career in this field.
How did Turing Talent play a role in finding an internship for you and in helping during the application process?
I was looking for an internship by using other platforms such as LinkedIn and other job portals. I was applying there, but the job profiles were not exactly what I was looking for, just for the sake of applying for an internship versus applying there. However, when I had a discussion with one of the Turing Talent members, I was told that whatever you’re looking for we will mainly look and focus into that particular year and try to match your profile with the job requirement. And luckily, they found something which I really wanted. It was like a perfect match!
It is great to hear that! What do you say to people considering joining the leadership program of Turing Talent?
Well, I can say that Turing Talent is really a good platform and very good initiative. People, who are looking for an internship, should explore Turing Talent and explain what their needs are because Turing Talent can find you what exactly you are looking for. You don’t need to go somewhere else and compromise with your expectations. I can say that Turing Talent is the right platform.
