Moving absent from house to go after a dream is not effortless, but Computer Science college student Yifan (Emma) Wang uprooted herself twice to stick to her very own.
At a youthful age, Yifan showed an fascinated in pc science and was supported by her relatives to do the sudden and prevail over adversity. “When I was incredibly small, my mother was often declaring that if anyone suggests you are not superior at math, physics, or laptop science just due to the fact you are a female, it is whole nonsense,” recollects Yifan.
With that mentality, she left China in 2018 and moved to Halifax to begin her degree in pc science at Dalhousie.
Though leaving residence was not an easy preference, Yifan knew that Dalhousie was the correct one.
“I read that Dalhousie had a lot of remarkable professors who presented college students with a good deal of chances. I also uncovered the courses covered a range of topics I was interested in,” she clarifies. “When I was young, I failed to know which fields of laptop science I was specially intrigued in, so it was a fantastic possibility for me to pick out a selection of programs and discover the place my pursuits have been.”
Facing fears, discovering prospects
Yifan has taken comprehensive edge of her time invested at Dal, finishing co-op placements with businesses this kind of as Ubisoft and RBC as very well as accomplishing investigation with a supervisor by means of the Undergraduate College student Investigation Awards (USRA). She’s also finished an honors thesis and been given an Amazon World-wide-web Providers (AWS) Cloud Practitioner certification, to name just a several of her accomplishments.
Yifan’s thesis analysis was supervised by Norbert Zeh, a professor in the College of Computer Science, and concentrated on combinatorial algorithms that evaluate the change concerning phylogenetic trees, a diagram exhibiting the evolutionary relationships among many biological species or other entities.
Finishing an honors thesis at the undergraduate degree is uncommon, but it was anything Yifan appeared forward to.
“Research taught me how to encounter my concern of failing,” she claims. “There’s something highly effective about discovering something new. Investigate taught me to by no means give up and to generally try out to enhance myself.”
Constructing virtual properties
In her cloud computing course, Yifan appreciated the fingers-on initiatives and developing the cloud-completely ready software architecture. “It feels like setting up digital residences and it’s your obligation to make them steady,” she claims.
In the course of a team project that made use of a wide variety of cloud products and services, she felt a strong feeling of accomplishment just after her staff was prosperous. Following these activities, she resolved to learn more about cloud awareness and investigate the career prospects in the field.
When one particular of Yifan’s instructors, Robert Hawkey, proposed she implement for the AWS Cloud Practitioner certificate, it felt like a normal action for Yifan. The certification is intended for everyone who has a basic information and desires to advance their expertise of the AWS system — a assorted, evolving cloud computing platform furnished by Amazon that consists of a combination of software package choices.
“Yifan was the only university student to go after and reach the formal AWS Cloud Practitioner certification from Amazon. This certification implies she now has obtain to a position board on AWS obtainable only to qualified people today,” states Hawkey. “Jobs mentioned on this board come from Fortune 500 corporations. She’s opened the door to the best positions in the industry by means of her really hard do the job.”
Hunting for the keys to Google
Yifan’s tough do the job certainly did open the doorway to prospects, major her to secure a placement with Google as a software package engineer in internet site dependability in just the cloud division. The job will focus on composing infrastructures as well as checking and determining underlying stability issues of cloud services.
Nonetheless with all Yifan’s achievements, she says the interview procedure with Google was a humbling working experience. Getting picked as a applicant was only the tip of the iceberg just after a prolonged and elaborate selecting course of action.
“I had to make certain my resume was extraordinary,” she clarifies. “So, I established a private web page that involved my personal computer science tasks and uploaded demo films on YouTube.”
Yifan is grateful for feeling properly ready for the opportunity. She thinks her co-op placements put together with pc science programs definitely served her establish the self confidence and know-how desired to protected the job. She acknowledges that whilst the arms-on practical experience and foundational awareness were essential, she could not have performed it with no the support from the peers, professors, and pals she met whilst living in Halifax.
“I experienced a large amount of fears when I initially obtained to Halifax, but I created a good good friend who created finding out overseas a whole lot a lot easier. Any time I made mistakes, she would patiently aid me and stimulate me. I have built so many wonderful close friends and reminiscences whilst I’ve been in this article,” says Yifan, who done her class get the job done in December 2021 and ideas to go to her convocation ceremony in May well 2022.
In February, Yifan packed her baggage and mentioned goodbye to Halifax. After yet again, she finds herself leaving just one home to explore a different. Right now, she phone calls Waterloo, Ontario dwelling whilst she will work in her aspiration job at Google.
