Major: Mathematics
Minors: Statistics, computer science
Graduation year: 2024
Employer
Epic Systems in Verona, Wisconsin.
Job title
I am a technical solutions engineer. I work with a half dozen hospital systems, including the largest on the west coast, to help configure and troubleshoot their systems. My job involves analyzing large amounts of data to recommend solutions to oftentimes critical problems as well as troubleshoot code and write database searches to aid in these goals.
What sparked your interest in your areas of study?
I was late to really pick up math. I took the covid semester off and took calc 2 at UNO (closer to home), it was really beautiful and I wanted to do more - so I switched from poli-sci to math and went from there.
What do you see as the value of your CAS degree?
Problem solving is what focusing on math for 3 years helps build up. Now that I’m applying it in a real world scenario, I’m reinforcing good habits and it’s helped me to succeed and exceed expectations, and I will do my best to continue that trend.
Who helped you get to where you are now?
The professors are all wonderful. Professor Bo Deng, Steven Scott, Jianghao Wang (especially early on, he was very thoughtful and I enjoyed having him as a teacher). Also want to give props to the Japanese professors (特に近藤先生) their classes were super fun and a nice change-up when I was doing math, stats, and programming all day.
Tell us about the path you took to get to where you are today in your career and how you applied your education in your areas of study to get here.
I’m less than a year out of school, but Epic had offered me the position before I graduated. The problem solving skills from math have helped me everywhere to be frank. To be a bit more informative, though.. Math, computer science, and stats help me understand and analyze complicated healthcare data. My background in computer science makes me stronger at reading, understanding, and troubleshooting code in a large, complex codebase. And putting in the effort to further my education has made me more capable of dealing with life and work at large. I thought it was cheesy when I was there, but the motto rings true - in our grit, our glory.
What are your future professional goals?
I enjoy making an immediate, positive impact to healthcare, but I’d like to explore more technical areas. I hope to aid in development of agent-type ai (data-driven and rigorously tested ai development or application building is the real interest). Epic’s positioning as a leader in health data doing ai development themselves, I am reaching for opportunities now. Though, I do plan to go back to school to dive deeper into computer science and mathematics.
