About Insight:
Insight Sensing started its journey at the University of Minnesota and was founded by Water Resource, Land and Atmospheric PHDs Brian Bohman and Tyler Nigon. With a grant from the National Science Foundation, Bohman and Nigon took their idea for smarter planting and turned it into a growing business that combines ground and satellite tech to make data-driven predictions for on-farm decision making.
To help them develop their software, Bohman and Nigon hired two data scientist interns through the SciTech program. Both Sara Spring, a graduate student studying data science at the University of St. Thomas, and Mohana Krishna Vutukuru, a graduate student studying computer science at the University of Minnesota, came to this opportunity with previous internship experience, much to offer and an enthusiasm to learn.
About the interns:
Spring and Vutukuru took on a good deal of responsibility right from the start with Vutukuru seeing to data and categorizing satellite images within the database and Spring writing code designed to instruct the satellites to ensure they’re gathering the desired images.
“When the code you’ve written runs and it does what it’s meant to, that’s really satisfying,” Spring said proudly.
Looking back on his summer with Insight, Vutukuru said that his favorite part of the internship was applying what he learned in class while learning new skills through this exposure.
“I learned a lot about the agronomy industry,” he said. “I’d like to continue in this industry, especially working with Tyler and Brian. The Industry is fast growing and has a lot of problems to be solved.”
As a small startup, Bohman and Nigon both expressed their appreciation for the hard work and impactful contributions their interns made.
“We told them going in, ‘you’ll be the resident experts.’” Nigon said. “We learn as much from them as they do from us.”
Get involved
Make an impact on a future STEM professional’s life and strengthen your talent pipeline. Start planning your internship today at scitechmn.org. At least 200 wage matches are available on a first come, first hire basis between now and August 2021.
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