WIMTACH Student Profile: Ivan Lo

Student Researchers at WIMTACH regularly have the opportunity to learn about applied research processes through their involvement in a variety of industry partner collaborations. As the needs of WIMTACH industry partners differ, they are enabled to see the differences and parallels between how projects are managed for different industries including, for example, software-based projects versus hardware engineering projects. This special feature of the WIMTACH internship program was perfectly attuned to the interests and background of Ivan Lo, a Student Researcher at WIMTACH with a professional background in researching from his role as a Research Scientist in Hong Kong.

After joining WIMTACH in January, Ivan was assigned to assist the Center of Explainable Data Analytics with a project collaboration with Workforce Wellness. The collaboration centered on the enhancement of an Artificial Intelligence care-based people management platform to assist healthcare professionals with burnout detection and relief. This project makes use of Artificial Intelligence models to help with developing strategies for increasing the wellbeing of health care professionals and facilitate better processes for reducing burnout levels. A student in the Software Engineering – Technology Artificial Intelligence program at Centennial College, Ivan is particularly enthusiastic about this project because of the chance to see how AI models can be used beyond the general use cases he learned in school. “It is interesting and exciting to try to apply the latest technology or solutions to a specific domain,” he said. “What makes me feel interested is that I can have actual workplace experiences in developing different types of models or try to adapt some existing platforms or solutions into a real-life project.”

Working as a Full-stack student developer, Ivan has been involved in different stages of the project development of this platform, enabling him to wear many hats in the project team. He has been able to assist the team with API development, and research how to develop burnout models using neural networks. Beyond his development experience with his own Python-based projects, he had minimum development experience before joining WIMTACH. As a result, the internship marked a major turning point in his learning journey as he was prompted to write JavaScript code and use the Python framework in different types of programming that challenged him to improve his skills. “I surely have learned a lot,” he said. Ivan notes that he has gained critical development skills and experience with the core technology of Front-end development through his contribution to this project including exposure to JavaScript, Node JS, experience with the React library and a familiarity with the Next JS framework. He has also learned best practices in documentation and organization, and has even been enabled to deploy new network models written using deep learning frameworks such as Python. “These are all in the level of experience that is very important for my career development [later],” he said.

While collaborating with other student researchers, he is able to gain mentorship from senior students with more specialized industry experience. “They have a vast amount of knowledge in both Front-end and Back-end development so I learn a lot from them,” he said. The collaborative team environment at WIMTACH has also enhanced his communication and problem-solving approach, skills which he feels can only truly be developed through active participation in a community-based development setting. So, through his participation in weekly team meetings, he is able to learn from the ideas generated from the team as they develop solutions to meet deliverables for the project. “I get to understand the background of other students better and get to know that they have an abundant amount of knowledge that I can learn from,” he said. “I get to do something that I have never pictured myself in doing.”

Since Ivan has been able to be part of the development of the project since the early days of development, he’s gained a strong appreciation of the level of experience and knowledge required in choosing a suitable infrastructure for a project and in general, has come to learn about the level of knowledge required to choose among different types of development pathways. This unique vantage point encouraged him to envision programming through solution-based and goal-oriented development to first consider the services that are needed and choose an applicable infrastructure tool to support those needs. In doing so, he was also researching the tools that are already available in the market to ensure that the team is taking advantage of resources that are already available. Although this work can be quite tedious, Ivan found that he was able to gain a deeper understanding of different programming approaches and learned how to consider how different criteria can ultimately ease his path in development. “This increased my understanding of how it’s like to develop a custom solution, based on existing materials that are available on the market,” he said.

Compared to working on his own project, he explained that he’s now been able to develop with an eye for creating value at every step of the development process, and the fact that his work will be used for business development in the technology market added another layer of excitement for him. “It’s like a driver for [students] to make things better and more aligned to industry standards,” he said. “We want to provide something that looks like other professional products in the market.”

In five years, Ivan hopes to pursue a research or academic career and this project has enabled him to gain critical skills to showcase his work to prospective clients and employers. “It will certainly help me when I want to present my ideas or research work to any prospective [employers],” he said.

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