Marinetraffic (Alumni Host, Keble College

I would say that all internships are a good insight into a certain career path - whether you

decide to go into that field or not in the future. Internships with the SIP are also a great way of

building connections.

MMathsCompSci, Final Year Undergraduate, a mixture of in-person and remote

working

Work Projects

The project was to create an index to indicate congestion and

utilisation for container vessel terminals. I first extracted the

data using SQL, then created visualisation to aid with exploring

the dataset. After manipulating the data and trying out various

methods, I created an index that suited the customers' needs

while being simple enough to be understood. With the help of

my supervisor, I was able to incorporate this into the

company's pipeline.

Daily Life

For in-person sessions, I was able to talk to other co-workers, as well as interact with other

interns and ask them for help. We also had team lunches, where we talked about the company,

industry, as well as had casual chats. When the internship switched to remote, I was able to

work from home by keeping note of the tasks to do through slack messages and regular

meetings with supervisors. Us interns also created a group and had regular meetings to help

each other out. Taking advantage of the remote nature, I was able to travel to other places in

the UK: working in the accommodation during the day, exploring the area and relaxing after

work.

Lasting Impressions

I enjoyed the internship and experience. It gave me another opportunity to see about how data

is used at different companies, as well as the maritime industry. I also learnt more about how to

balance between business needs and technical complexity. It also exposed me to the work of

pre-processing and managing the data in the first place.

Luke Kennedy, Christ Church, MPhys Physics, Second Year Undergraduate, a

mixture of in-person and remote working

Work Projects

The internship consisted of two main projects. The first project was to create a dashboard to

display data about the compliance of a marine terminal with sanctions related to the shipping

industry to the terminal operator, and the second project was to create an engaging

visualisation that demonstrated the proportion of ships who report their ETA at a given port in

UTC and the proportion that report their ETA in the local time zone of the port. The main

achievements of the first project were successfully calling the relevant API to retrieve the risk

and compliance data for a specific set of ships before extracting the relevant information from

that call and representing it neatly in a dashboard. The other main achievement of the first

project was merging this data with data we had stored locally about the ships to create a

holistic representation of the activity at a terminal level to help the operators see if they are

complying with global sanctions.

For the second project the main achievements

were when we were able to plot the relevant

data (actual time of arrival minus estimated

time of arrival) in a histogram and see clearly

two distinct peaks indicating that there were a

proportion of ships reporting in local time and a proportion of ships reporting in UTC. We were

then able to fit a model, consisting of several normal distributions, to the data allowing us to

extract the percentages of ships reporting ETA in each style. Throughout the internship we

were supported with twice weekly meetings with our supervisors and at any point necessary

we were able to contact them via Slack to ask for help. There was also an extensive induction

process that enabled us to be familiar with the systems used by company to enable our success.

Daily Life

Since the internship was primarily remote, I often

began my days shortly after breakfast where I would

check my emails and calendar to see what was

scheduled for the day. There would often be updates

ready by the time I began as I was in a time zone two

hours behind the majority of the company so I would respond to those first before returning to

my work log from the previous day to see what tasks I had to accomplish for the day. I would

work on these until lunch and after lunch we often had a catchup with the other interns where

we could talk about our projects and discuss any questions we may have.

After this I would continue with my tasks that I had been set, these would often consist of

either coding, retrieving data from APIs or the main database, analysing data, creating

dashboards, or writing documentation. As I reached the end of the working day, I would write

up what I had achieved the previous day in my work log and make a note of any tasks that I

needed to complete the following day to help structure my work. To unwind after the day, I

would often go for a walk after work to help separate home and work a bit better.

Lasting Impressions

The lasting impressions of the internship were that I would be a good fit for the technology

sector and would definitely enjoy working remotely in the future. Prior to this I had very little

experience working and applying my skills in a corporate environment, so this opportunity was

extremely helpful for my career development and after completing it I am extremely satisfied in

what I have been able to achieve. I found the work stimulating and challenging and was able to

develop my personal skills and gain a lot of relevant experience in the technology sector.