My hometown of Camrose doesn't really offer a lot for a technically-minded girl, especially one majoring in comp sci. I had just about resigned myself to hanging around on campus at UofA for the spring break when I spotted an internship at the Porcine Research Institute in Camrose (PRIC):
Internship: Join an innovative research team and contribute to our world-leading team in swine research and the Canadian pig industry. The successful applicant will be placed with a research team investigating efficient AI solutions. This position is open to all science majors for the final years of a BSc or BE or related degree to post-graduate diploma level. The internship runs for ten weeks and is partially funded by the Canadian Research Council and contributes course credits to those degree programs requiring practical work experience.
While I didn't know much about pigs, I did know a lot about AI, so it sounded like a great fit for me. Many of my comp sci papers dealt with machine learning and the previous year I had completed an internship where we used tensor flow neural models to evaluate chemical aging in the pulp and paper industry. Do I need to mention that I'm an A-grader, I find this sort of thing easy.
So, I sent in my CV and was duly offered an interview. I was quietly confident.
Still come interview day I was a bundle of nerves. While I'm academically strong, putting myself forward in public situations is not something I enjoy. Granted an interview is not really a public performance, but I get always get anxious that I will not measure up to expectation.
I wear a plain white blouse and blue skirt. Good practical and professional looking clothes.
I'm met at reception by David who heads up the Research and Development team. He takes me to a rather cosy meeting room with a nice couch and goes over the basics of the interview process. While he is doing this, two other guys come in. The first, James, call me Jim, is dark and damn handsome; the other Stephen is wearing overalls! What?
Actually all three men are pretty good looking, at least compared to the boys in my comp sci classes. Of course, they're all older than me. I guess Jim and Stephen were early thirties and David somewhat older. They look confident, competent, and friendly. Stephen's eyes linger on my chest, but the other two are happy to meet my eyes.
Most of my interaction with men (well, boys) are those in my classes. And about the most daring and least creepy of those would be Daniel. He tried to get me to show him my boobs once, nominally so he could model them with cosine curves! "Umm, no." Anyway, I digress.
David says that he has something else he needs to do, but Jim and Stephen will chat with me about the project and not to worry as everyone is pretty informal at PRIC. I can't help but blush slightly at hearing that name said out loud for the first time.
Jim begins by asking me to talk about myself. This is the part I always hate. I start talking about my degree and slowly relax as the words began to flow. I described some of my previous machine learning work, but noticed increasingly blank looks from Jim and Stephen. Apparently something was not quite right with my pitch.
I decide to cut short further details and finish with a couple of personal notes about how I'm involved with a dance group, squash, and member of a young women in science association.
Jim says, "Thanks for that Linda. Let me tell you a bit of background about PRIC before we get to the actual project."
He went on to describe how the purpose of the Institute is to assist pig farmers throughout Canada, by helping with tracking animals, genomics, fertility and passel quality, best practice for farming, and so on.
Farmers buy shares in PRIC and in turn get the benefits of anything developed at the institute. In recent years, profits from pig farming have been good, so there is a reasonable amount of money available for research.
"So this brings me to the specific project for the internship. Basically we are working on developing a new artificial insemination device that is suitable for use on the farm. We do some computer work around the design and feed that through to our fabrication lab for prototyping. Then it comes back here are we test in the lab and, depending on how that goes, Stephen trials it in the pens. That's about it."
The penny dropped, artificial insemination, AI, not artificial intelligence. No wonder their eyes had started to glaze over earlier.
"You would be mostly working with me in the offices here, but potentially also with Stephen. There are other R&D projects going on in parallel and you will get to come along to various meetings to hear about those as well."
Working out what their notion of AI was had left me flummoxed. This wasn't really what I was looking for. It sounded like there was some computer work involved, but not the really technical stuff I liked. I could already feel this slipping away from me, along with a rising panic that I hadn't bothered to apply for internships anywhere else.
I desperately tried to think of a couple of relevant questions. I asked a couple of lame questions about hours and dress standard, before thinking to ask about what software and operating system they use.
Jim quickly answered and Stephen added a couple of further comments about the chance to be outdoors for some of the work (as if that was a major bonus). And that was it, a brief stop at David's office on the way out, "We will be in touch one way or the other later this week."
I hopped back into my car feeling quite despondent. I almost cried. There were going to be much better candidates than me for this. No doubt the position would go to some wannabe farmer type.
Wednesday: nothing.
Thursday: nothing.
Friday: David called. I had been successful and could I start the following Monday. Yes! What a relief.
Come Monday, I was pretty excited. My PRIC experience started with a general tour of the facility. Overall, the place is a lot bigger than I imagined. I was shown around all the departments from admin through to where Stephen worked in semen collection and application in "the pens".
I soon learned that an earthy humor pervaded the place. There were lots of in-house jokes revolving around semen, PRICs, boars, sows, and gilts. I found myself blushing a lot those first few days.
Jim helped me get up to speed on the project and I worked closely with him. Essentially we were working on a device that could be used to impregnate the sows. It consisted of a chilled reservoir for holding the semen which could then be directed down a tubular spout which was to be inserted into the sow.
The idea was a trigger could then be pulled to dispense a carefully controlled amount of semen, delivering directly to where it would be most effective. Picture something like a pistol, but with a larger rounder chamber, and you will be close to what Jim had designed.
Stephen's role was largely limited to testing prototypes and providing feedback on the ergonomics and ease of use.
There were other development projects going on in the same lab and there were other women who worked in the lab. So I did not completely lack for female company. I was getting a more comfortable with the lingo of PRIC to the extent that I no longer blushed every time semen was mentioned. Sexual innuendo seemed pervasive with many of the female employees giving as good as they received.
My first weeks were spent learning about the computer-aided-design software used to construct the files which were then fed to the 3D printers to fabricate the prototypes. The hardest parts of the design revolved around getting the exact right measure of semen out of the chilled reservoir, down through the spout, and with sufficient velocity that it didn't all end up stuck in the tubes.
Real boar semen was too precious for regular use in our lab experiments, so we used something called S3 (more fully 'synthetic swine semen') which was carefully formulated to have similar physical properties to the real thing.
Because R&D did not interact with actual clients (i.e., farmers and their agents), the work hours were flexible. It was common for some of the research time to work late into the evening early in the week, so that they could skip Friday altogether. Jim, in particular, liked working this way, and I fell into keeping roughly the same hours as he did.
Once a week management allowed for each staff member to have a couple of beers or wine on site. Just enough to show appreciation, but not such much that employees would get done for DUI or similar. Most of the Institute did this on a Friday, but because of the number of R&D staff skipping Friday, we tended to do this on Wednesday.
