Name: Kyle Denney
Hometown: Dryden, Michigan
What is your major? I am pursuing my master’s degree in computer engineering as a member of the Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab at FIU.
Where did you intern? What did you do there? I interned at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Lab where I worked as a summer research intern in the Cyber Security Division.
How did you get your internship? The CyberCorps Scholarship for Service I received at FIU provides me with opportunities to meet government agencies through events and job fairs. I came in contact with Lincoln Lab at a job fair hosted in Washington, D.C., in January of this year. I was asked to officially apply for the internship, and I was given an offer prior to leaving D.C. I began the internship in the summer of 2018.
What advice do you have for those beginning the internship process? First, make sure your resume has been vetted by someone who knows you and can add details you may have forgotten. For this, my advisor —Selcuk Uluagac, an assistant professor for FIU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who also happens to be the director of FIU’s Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab— was very helpful. From there, you just have to put your name out there. I never would have imagined I’d be working at the world-famous MIT, yet here I am.
What projects did you work on? I worked under Mike Vai, a senior staff member in the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology group at Lincoln Lab. Under Vai’s supervision, I worked on a cybersecurity project that involved UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) drones. Vai was a great mentor, and I learned a lot under him. Obviously my technical skills were required for the project, but Vai spent a lot of time guiding me in actually managing a project from start to finish. I can learn the technical skills anywhere, but it’s the soft-skills I learned that were the most valuable.
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