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When Andrea Wynn made the choice to attend Rose-Hulman, she never imagined she would be interning at companies as large as Amazon and as small as a private start-up. But she has accomplished that and much more. As she nears the end of her senior year, Wynn is grateful she found Rose and for all she’s been able to accomplish.

When making her college choice, Wynn, who hails from Redmond, Washington, cites the small class sizes and tight-knit community as the main factors that drew her to Rose-Hulman.

“Rose is collaborative and not competitive,” she said. “I wanted to learn from my college experience and build a strong network rather than fighting my peers for grades.”

Wynn is a double major in computer science and math, with a double minor in data science and psychology. She has a goal in all the work she does: to understand how things work, how to improve them and how to apply that knowledge to make the world a better place. She hopes to accomplish that through data science and machine learning, eventually pursuing a graduate degree in machine learning research.

Her interest in data science began during an artificial intelligence class during her second year at Rose. During her junior year, Wynn took a machine learning course along with an independent research class with Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Tracy Weyand, Ph.D. She worked under the advisement of Weyand on a project that applied graph theory research to material science. The results of that project will be published in an article Wynn wrote for an upcoming an issue of “SIURO,” the undergraduate math journal of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

After that experience, Wynn began thinking about a career that involves research, computer science and math.

Wynn has completed four internships while studying at Rose. The first was with Collins Aerospace in Iowa where she worked with the research and development team to build a digital cockpit prototype. She built a guidance queue display for pilots flying in formation that was visually intuitive and didn’t force them to look back and forth through various displays.

She utilized the Rose Office of Career Services and Employer Relations with help securing her first internship with Collins and attended two information sessions with the company. Additionally, Wynn and a team of student participated in the Diversity Connect Challenge, an engineering design challenge of which Collins was a sponsor. Her team designed a system to give wrist watches to students that would connect with the campus security system. Wynn’s team won first place in the competition. She was offered an interview at the fall career fair.  

Wynn then secured a software engineering internship with Kratos Defense and Security Solutions in Colorado where she worked on a signal processing project. Kratos manages satellite ground communications, and her project was to develop a prototype of a phase noise generator that would eventually be used to test the reliability of the satellite communication.

In 2021, Wynn worked as a software engineer intern for Impact Snacks, a small start-up company in Boston. She worked on a color palette generator to be deployed on company websites for Impact Snack’s clients. She has continued her involvement with the Impact Snacks team and is currently working as a researcher investigating how to apply graph theory to model supply chains and their environmental impact.  

Wynn’s most recent internship was with Amazon as a software development engineer intern with the AWS Outposts team. Her team managed the installation and set-up process of Amazon server racks on Managed installation of company racks on customer sites. She worked on a dashboard to monitor the server rack installations and created a health score that measured the health of the outposts. The health score allowed Amazon engineers to instantly assess problems rather than looking through numerous data to find potential issues.

Wynn believes each of her internships to taught her something different and valuable. Collins taught her how to work in a professional environment and allowed her to see how computer science could be applied to any industry. Kratos exposed her to a different engineering field and helped her learn quickly on the job. Amazon gave Wynn an incredible networking experience and further opened her eyes to machine learning research. Impact Snacks is a company that is closest to Wynn’s personal mission and goals of environmental sustainability and preventing climate change. Working for a small company also allowed her to meet every person in the business and become familiar with the business aspect, as well as the engineering side.

Wynn has also made an impact locally, on the Rose-Hulman campus. She is serving a second term as president of the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE). As SASE president, she created a local community service program and a mentorship program for first-year students. She also created a first-year representative position and has worked on connecting the Rose chapter with other regional chapters. Wynn is also serving as conference chair of SASE’s Midwest regional conference. She was also involved in the Society of Women Engineers, serving as secretary for a few years.

As Wynn nears the end of her undergraduate career, she credits Rose for much of her opportunities and success and tells prospective students not to overlook a school just because their name is not as familiar. 

“If you plan to go into your industry, it matters what you accomplish at school,” Wynn said. “At a smaller school, especially at a community like Rose, you can build a strong network and stand out in your major and get really involved with student organizations. I’m really glad I came to Rose and found all that.”