Meet a #futureshaper: Jennifer Berumen

Here’s what the senior at Arizona State University said about her software internship:

How did you become interested in programming?

From a robotics club in high school to playing video games with my older brothers, it just seemed natural that I would study computer science in college. I’m involved in Grace Hopper and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE).

What is your role at Honeywell?

I’m an intern working on one of the cybersecurity teams. I’m creating an internal tool that helps product teams to ensure they’re creating secure products, and implementing the best security practices in order to reduce areas of vulnerability. It also helps our cybersecurity team mitigate new vulnerabilities and enable rapid response.

How do you feel about your project now vs. when you first started?

As I started working with my project, I have become aware just how important it is, especially as everything is becoming more interconnected. There’s so much data going online, including cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) … more data that can be exposed. As things become more interconnected, it becomes even more important to ensure that data is secure and that everyone’s information is safe. I immediately felt like part of the team, that my ideas mattered and that I was able to contribute.

What have you learned at Honeywell?

With my classes, we learned the basics of some programming languages. When I started here, I was kind of overwhelmed because the project I was working on is a giant codebase and it’s pretty intimidating. Now I can think about how to implement different features, and get feedback from colleagues to make sure that the product is very user-friendly and intuitive. Even with web development, different technology stacks and trends come out every month, within every sector of industry and programming language. There are so many different things – which is something that attracted me to computer science – that you’re never done learning.