Jessica Bohm, a fourth-year Computer Science student, is one of six Waterloo students to receive a 2023 Co-op Student of the Year award.
Jessica made a meaningful impact during her co-op work term at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre, in winter and spring of 2023. As an ATLAS deep learning research assistant, she used her analytical skills to conduct groundbreaking research that will contribute to evolving particle acceleration. She had the opportunity to test a variety of machine models to determine their quality and performance. She demonstrated both her capabilities and resilience by accompanying this work with complex research.
“Through my time (at TRIUMF), we learned that the models did perform quite well on certain aspects of the overall goal,” Jessica says. “I was excited to hear that the work I had done, the research and development of these machine learning models, could be used in the final reconstruction process of the ATLAS data.”
Jessica worked in image segmentation for the development of ATLAS’s reconstruction software. The reconstruction aims to track data collected from the European Council for Nuclear Research’s (CERN’s) Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator in the world.
“I was shocked. Even when I saw that there was an opportunity to work here as a student,” Jessica says. “I was always in awe of the big detectors. Reading about them in the news and being able to be a part of it was exciting.”
Using her computer science knowledge throughout her co-op terms, she developed skills in research, data analysis, machine learning and problem-solving.
The article was excerpted from “Co-op Students of the Year make meaningful impacts on their workplaces,” a Waterloo News article by Cameron Stirrup.
Jessica Bohm shared more about her experience in a Q&A article by the University of Waterloo's Co-operative Education.
