| Students
At Work The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) is the national body in Canada that strategically invests in the country’s scientific and technological capabilities. To stimulate student interest in research in the natural sciences and engineering, and to encourage graduate studies and research careers, NSERC offers Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA). Peng (Peter) Chen, now entering his 3rd year as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, won one of these awards to work at Rocscience this past summer.  Peter worked on a project to develop a Windows database program for accessing and presenting records of rock properties in an intuitive manner.
The objective of the database is to allow engineers to easily obtain records of rock properties for a given geographical area and/or rock type. This program should be helpful for solving the data-limited problems common in rock engineering. Engineers can base their preliminary design on the information provided by this program to gain insights into the problem, instead of having to carry out expensive, time-consuming and labor-intensive rock strength tests.Peter did an outstanding job – he was excellent at adopting and applying best practices throughout the development cycle to make it a productive and smooth process. At the same time, Peter gained valuable first-hand experience of the product development procedures used by companies such as Rocscience for producing software that meets the wide-ranging needs of users. Peter brought more than just technical skills and ability to our organization; we benefited from his fresh perspectives and learned important information about university students such as their thought processes, problem perceptions, and software usage habits. Peter has returned to the University of Toronto to pursue a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Thanks to his time with us at Rocscience, he returns to his studies with valuable experience that will help him to achieve future success. |