Outside of her work as senior software engineer, Wendy Edwards (MSLIS '09) is active in the areas of security and data science through her involvement in Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS); SANS Institute's Women's Cyber Academy; and NASA's Datanauts program and Space Apps Challenge hackathon. Edwards was a two-time champion in the Target Cyber Defense Challenge, earning scholarships to attend the WiCyS annual conference. In addition to her MSLIS, she holds an MS in computer science from the University of Illinois Springfield.
Where do you work, and what is your role?
I work as a senior software engineer for ASPCA (American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). My job involves legacy software maintenance and a number of automations related to data and web scraping. I also help with security vulnerabilities. Currently, I am learning Azure Cloud and working on a project that uses artificial intelligence to extract information from online documents.
What do you like best about your job?
My favorite part of the job is being able to continuously learn and build my technical skills while working for a nonprofit with a great mission.
What do you see as the most critical impact of your work?
The most critical impact of my work is finding ways to add efficiency, often by automating tasks and finding ways to make different services work together.
How did the iSchool at Illinois help you get to where you are today?
The iSchool was extremely supportive to me. The coursework taught me about modeling and managing data, and it also helped me to improve my communication skills. All these things have been highly valuable in the workplace.
What advice would you like to share with iSchool students?
There are tons of opportunities at the iSchool—take advantage of them. Also, the faculty do some fascinating research. Spend some time learning about their work, because you may find something that you’ll want to collaborate on.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
In my spare time, I like to spend time with Ciaran, my flat-coated retriever. He’s the great-nephew of the late great Aoife, who I had while taking classes at the iSchool. We've taken classes in obedience, rally, tracking, and agility at the Dog Training Club of Champaign-Urbana. He is also one major win away from a championship.