Practicum Spotlight: Medtronic

Emily Grayburn

BSIS student Emily Grayburn discusses her practicum experience at Medtronic.

What is your area of interest at the iSchool?

My concentration in the iSchool is data analytics, but my specific areas of interest are in health technology and data protection.
 
Where did you do your practicum, and what was your role?

I worked as an IT intern in the Innovation Lab at Medtronic in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

How did you find out about the practicum?

I found out about the practicum during my Spring 2022 semester. I told my advisor that I would be interning at Medtronic over the summer, and he said that I would be able to count this internship toward course credit, which is why I decided to do it.

What knowledge and skills did you acquire?

Through this role, I acquired knowledge about human-centered design and the importance of having empathy for patients in order to build a product that better suits their needs and lifestyle. I gained a better understanding of the different types of medical devices that are being designed to treat more than 70 conditions, how to effectively interview upper-level engineers at Medtronic to learn about their designs for new medical devices, and how to analyze data that came from interviewing patients with comorbidities.

What did you like best about working at the organization?

What I liked best about working for Medtronic is the mission that they have, which is to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. I knew that I wanted to work for a company that is making a tangible change in the world. Through the innovative devices that Medtronic created, as well as the commitment they have to the patients they serve, I was able to go to work every day knowing that I was contributing to efforts that would directly impact the healthcare field.

What advice do you have for students who are interested in a practicum?

My advice for those who are interested in a practicum is to go ahead and do it! Completing my practicum at Medtronic allowed me to gain many skills, both soft and technical, that have set me up for success in the workforce. Additionally, this internship allowed me to receive a full-time offer before graduation, which has alleviated the stress of having to find a job.

What are your plans after you complete your degree?

After I graduate in May 2023, I will be working as an associate Early Career Program IT analyst in the IT Early Career Rotation Program in the Data Protection and Cryptography unit in Minneapolis.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Wei receives Amazon Post Internship Fellowship

PhD student Tianxin Wei has been awarded an Amazon Post Internship Fellowship, which will provide $20,000 in unrestricted funds and $20,000 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits to support Wei's research with his advisor, Professor Jingrui He. For the past two summers, Wei has served as an applied scientist intern at Amazon in Palo Alto, California. He has been part of a team that is working on search query understanding within Amazon apps and services, as well as developing shopping foundation models.

Tianxin Wei

iSchool participation in iConference 2025

The following iSchool faculty and students will participate in iConference 2025, which will be held virtually from March 11-14 and physically from March 18-22 in Bloomington, Indiana. The theme of this year's conference is "Living in an AI-gorithmic world."

Youth-AI-Safety named a winning team in international hackathon

A team of researchers from the SALT (Social Computing Systems) Lab has been selected as a winner in an international hackathon hosted by the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence. The LLM Agents MOOC Hackathon brought together over 3,000 students, researchers, and practitioners from 127 countries to build and showcase innovative work in large language model (LLM) agents, grow the AI agent community, and advance LLM agent technology.

Gore honored in Singapore for community service

BSIS student Saloni Gore is passionate about community service, especially projects related to sustainability and social impact. It is this commitment to making a difference that prompted her to start a project to help provide clean water to rural communities in India and led her from Singapore to the iSchool, where she can learn how to use data and technology to benefit the world.

Saloni Gore