In July and August, the SCIL had the pleasure to work with a multidisciplinary team of five data science interns in collaboration with iXperience. The team of interns was composed by students from the USA and Singapore with quantitative backgrounds.
The interns were mainly involved in working on the Smart Business Modeler. Specifically, their project involved the improvement of the ecosystem radar, which is currently in the beta version. In the first step, the interns helped us on extending the database of companies and the next step focused on different interactive visualisation tools.
The first day started with an introduction at the SCIL and getting to know the team. René Bohnsack and the the SCIL’s team shared their motivation and current projects and learned more about the interns and their expectations. Moreover, the interns virtually met the tech-team, which is based in Ukraine and Austria. After getting acquainted with the Smart Business Modeler, we developed an agile workplan defining our goals and ways to achieve them.
The following weeks were dedicated to scraping various websites in order to improve our database. Moreover, a sentiment score was developed as well as industry predictions to help aspiring entrepreneurs. In addition, the interns have been working on developing different visualisations to improve the customer experience. Presented solutions included an interactive geographical map depicting competitor concentrations and a bubble chart to show the company size of competitors. Throughout the process, we faced several issues related to data security. However, in a great team effort we were able to develop creative solutions to occurring challenges.
Besides work, we had the pleasure to exchange different experiences related to working on different continents. An important topic we addressed was the value of data and different approaches to big data storage and data security. In addition, René Bohnsack and the SCIL’s team took the chance and showed the interns beautiful Lisbon during a social event.
Finally, we had the pleasure to follow the final presentation of the iX interns. It’s been great to see the project outcomes and reflect on the process together. We would like to take this opportunity and thank our interns for a great process and contributing to our work. We are looking forward to continue working together and wish you all the best!
