DOUBLING EFFORTS HIS

TIMOTHY LEE ’23 EXCELS IN COMPUTERS AND ENGINEERING PROJECTS

A fan of mystery novels, Timothy Lee ’23, an engineering and computer science double major, has enjoyed problem solving and detective work since he was a kid. Now, solving mysteries has become his career.

sing his experience in the Collaboratory, Lee landed an internship and then a job at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a software developer engineer. His duties will include working with Elastic Cloud Compute, which is a software that acts as the basis for hosting websites.

“People can create virtual environments—a computer within a computer—which they then create their website on and can change how many resources that want to allocate to that machine to adjust for speed or traffic,” he said. “My job will be to simplify those tasks and to make it as easy as possible for customers to do what they want to with our platform.”

In his sophomore year, he realized he could change his minor to a second major—computer science while still graduating on time. “I was pretty set on engineering up until my summer internship at AWS, where I fell in love with the development and investigative nature of bug fixing and decided to stay with computer science,” he said.

Along with his interest in computer science, Lee found that working with Messiah’s Collaboratory was a way to get hands-on engineering experience, which was his primary reason for transferring from Penn State. “I liked being able to actually do projects that were benefiting something,” he said.

A Leader In The Collab

He served as the student project manager for the Collaboratory’s Functional Electrical Stimulation project. The project focuses on researching functional electrical stimulation (FES) technology and designing/building a low-cost prototype that serves as an intervention to improve walking for patients after a stroke. The project team has since created a device that senses walking and stimulates toe movement at the appropriate time.

In addition to helping develop this gait detection sensor with the team, Lee—who is graduating this year— made sure to leave things in good shape for the next student project manager. “One of the biggest things that I’ve done for my job is create documentation where someone could understand everything I’ve done and figure out where to pick up the project from there,” he said.

During their bi-semester project reviews, the students present their work to professors and local experts.

“We have had people from the PT department talk to us, and local prosthetic companies would come sit in on our meetings and give us advice. Learning the coordination of that and understanding how to connect certain pieces to make one picture was really helpful,” he said.

Ryan Farris, project manager and assistant professor of engineering, worked closely with Lee in initiating and carrying out every aspect of the project.

“As a technical contributor, Tim has developed an impressive suite of real-time gait phase identification algorithms achieving high levels of accuracy and precision, a critical element in the success of this project,” Farris said. “Tim demonstrates a rigor in his approach to research and a commitment to quality which leads him to persevere through any challenge until a successful outcome is achieved. It’s been a privilege to have him on the FES team, and his contributions will serve the project well for many years after he graduates.”

Very Messiahspecific Application

Lee also gained experience in his field through his senior computer science group project, creating an app that provides convenience to Messiah students.

“It’s a reimaged FalconLink for your phone,” he explained.

“We focused on convenience and asked ourselves, ‘What is something that students normally check?’”

Through the app, students can find out what’s on the menu at Lottie Nelson Dining Hall, how many chapels they’ve attended, their student dining service balance and more.

“It’s a lot of [student] convenience features that are currently really tedious and aren’t really designed for the phone. We compiled all of that into one,” he said.

The group is working with the IT department to get it published for students later this year.

Lee says his favorite parts of his future career in computer science are debugging and problem-solving. “People submit tickets to you, and you have to dig through all of the code and figure out what’s wrong. The detective work of finding what is causing the problem is one of my favorite parts,” he said.

Like any college student on the cusp of graduation, Lee says he looks forward to no more homework, but he’s also excited to be a part of AWS fulltime.

“The culture is super friendly, I was expecting a massive office, like rows and rows of people, but they have 6-10 people teams,” he said. “They have a two-pizza policy where a team should be no bigger than what two pizzas can feed people, because then you lose the benefits of working in a team. That aspect of a team where people actually know each other was really exciting.”

— Molly McKim ’23

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COLLABORATORY’S FUNCTIONAL ELECTRICAL STIMULATION AND THEIR OTHER PROJECTS HERE: MESSIAH.EDU/COLLAB