Caroline was also the Cognitive Science Students Association President when she studied at SFU. Her course-work focused on Psychology, Computing, and Linguistics. She recently joined Sophos (1100 - 1500 people worldwide) where she works as a Software Developer.
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‘Take lots of third and fourth year courses, because those are more beneficial. Work with professors, volunteer in labs, do co-op, contribute to papers which get published.’
Q. What made you get into Cognitive Science?
A. I was doing my breadth courses and I took linguistics. I thought it was so cool so I took another, and ended up taking a whole bunch. I also took some psychology courses as part of the breadth requirement, and I enjoyed them a lot too. I went to a program fair in the Convo Mall, and the Linguistics Advisor, Rita, introduced me to the projects that were going on, and which fields Cognitive Science contributed to. At the time the tech industry was looking for people with an edge over just computing – combining creative skills and technical. Cognitive Science was perfect. I ended up choosing Linguistics, Psychology, and Computing, and got a minor in Computing Science also.
Q. Were your expectations met?
A. Absolutely. Starting in Cognitive Science I used to dream of building robots for the CIA. There are so many things you can do with a Cognitive Science degree.
Q. Other than building robots for the CIA, did you know where you wanted to go with it when you started?
A. It was pretty open-ended, but I really got into language processing (computational linguistics) a lot. The turning point though was when I took COGS300 with Maite Taboada. It was a special topic in Discourse and Dialogue Processing, analysing conversations between two people, such as in movies, everyday speech, and newspaper articles. Also that was the same term I was taking Anoop’s Computational Linguistics course. Seeing things from multiple perspectives significantly increased my interest in these areas.
Q. Overall, how has your cognitive science BA fit into your career?
A. I am officially a Software Developer, which is a bit of a broad term. Our company does anti-virus and anti-malware for large organizations. My role is multi-disciplinary as well. I write and debug code and quality assurance tests. We use Perl, C++, and possibly C#, so I need to know several programming languages. In terms of other disciplines, I use Psychology skills in User Interface design.
Q. Tell us about the job search process as a Cognitive Science graduate
A. I knew about some potential employers from hiring fairs, But after getting back from travelling for the summer, my main resource was a website called www.bctechnology.com. Companies like Electronic Arts, MDA, Telus, and a lot of recruiters are on there. I mainly went after specific positions such as Junior Programmer, QA Specialist, and ones in Psychology/health related industries. It took about two months to get my job. The interview process [at Sophos] was quite lengthy. I had about three different interviews with various people in the company. One of the interviews was about four hours long. At the end there was a technical test. It’s funny, you know how when it rains, it pours; I had put my resume onto BCTechnology.com, Workopolis.com and Monster.com, and was in the interview process with two or three companies. After I accepted the job at Sophos, the other companies also offered me jobs within days of each-other. But I had already taken the job with Sophos, so it was an easy decision for me.
Q. How have employers responded to your Cognitive Science degree?
A. I had a great conversation with the VP of Engineering, who I had actually interviewed with. He was very knowledgeable and sincere. He was curious about the Cognitive Science degree, wanted to know what kind of assets I could bring to the company that no one else had. I told him I brought a more wholistic view. I was coming at things from different perspectives, seeing new ways to solve problems, not just from a computer science background. As for other companies, the bigger telecommunications companies didn’t ask any questions about it. I emphasized my computer science education on my resume, so that may have affected employers’ perception.
Q. What are some of the more interesting parts of your job?
A. In my company we implement a system called “Paired Programming”. Every piece of the project has two people working on it together. The benefits are higher quality code, fewer bugs, and redundancy so that the intellectual capital is not lost if an employee leaves or gets sick. The result is a better workplace, and better products.
Q. How have you noticed your CogSci skills translated into transferable job skills?
A. Being able to communicate in the correct vocabulary for three different disciplines, knowing different computer languages, being able to talk to a variety of people.
Q. Any word on the street in your field about where Cognitive Science graduates are being hired?
A. I don’t know that I have a better perspective… yet at least. I know that Cognitive Science students should avoid positions which are very focused on doing just one thing. If you are doing Cognitive Science, you’ve already decided to do multiple things at once. You have four years experience doing things in multiple ways, so to go into a job that requires you to specialize in one task, with nothing new, you will probably be bored.
Q. Looking back… what advice do you have for current students?
A. Take lots of third and fourth year courses, because those are more beneficial. Work with professors, volunteer in labs, do co-op, contribute to papers which get published.
Q. I understand you presented at a conference while you were a Cognitive Science undergrad. Can you tell us more about that experience?
A. It was part of a term project for a Computing Science course I was taking - CMPT310. The project could be anything innovative/creative in the field of Artificial Intelligence. My team and I came up with a project that fit with our Cognitive Science/UI, Music, and Computing Science interests. We originally wanted to make a music generator which could generate lyrics based on a beat you gave it. Unfortunately it didn’t work out, but we were able to re-engineer it so that you could give it a beat and it would find which song matched in a list of 30 songs. A course taken with Anoop on Computational Linguistics (CMPT413) helped match input strings in an efficient way. This time the project worked so well that Diana, our professor, encouraged us to submit it as a paper to the AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) conference that fall. We refined and expanded its song base over the summer. Well everyone at the conference loved it. I was really glad because I didn’t know what to expect. The conference was the biggest I’ve ever been to. I’d been to smaller conferences such as the one SFU puts on, New Directions in Cognitive Science. At this one there were thousands of people, and we had a booth setup. It was awesome to be around so many brilliant minds and learn so much.
Q. You were the Cognitive Science student association president at SFU. Why do you think people should people get involved while at University?
A. You get to interact with a lot more professors, and people worldwide. Also it helps you get your money’s worth out of University. Employers care less about the piece of paper you get (your degree), and more about your confidence and experience. It’s your other achievements that they look at. Volunteering in labs and doing research is free experience that translates readily into job skills.
Thank you Caroline!
The heart of the Cognitive Science Program lies in its ability to facilitate creative cross-discipline thinking. Cognitive Science at SFU is proud to be the home of many thoughtful students who have found imaginative approaches to connect their broad interests in ways that allow them to get the engaging education they want. Learn more about other Cognitive Science Program alumni.