B-CU Computer Engineering Student Mel Cabrera Shares Transformative Internship Experience with IBM Corporation

by: Jhada Walker

B-CU Marketing and Communications Student Writer

This past summer, Mel Cabrera, a senior, computer engineering student, was one of thirty students selected from numerous schools across the United Students including UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UCF to participate in IBM’s summer internship program in Atlanta, Georgia. Cabrera was assigned to work with the QRadar Advisor team with locations in Taiwan and London, where he worked on DevOps,QA software development and backend coding. QRadar is a technology product that protects international businesses from potential cyber threats while advising clients with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Through hard work and dedication, Cabrera’s projects were featured in a live production, the other was recognized for greatly increasing development and sales efficiency.

During the internship, Cabrera was given the opportunity to attend IBM’s Hackathon. The Hackathon is a fun competition where teams turn their innovative thoughts and ideas into a working application. Out of the 700 U.S and 500 Canadian interns that participated. Cabrera and his intern team rose to the occasion completing the competition in the top 15 with their BlockChain Technology application.

Prior to ending the internship program, Cabrera was one of 10 students pre-approved for a position upon graduation. As a senior Cabrera has received multiple job offers from major corporations some include; IBM and JP Morgan (London), as a software developer. Currently Cabrera is speaking with Microsoft and Google about potential positions, although Cabrera plans on attending graduate school.

Cabrera’s hard work does not go unnoticed and Bethune-Cookman University is proud of his continuous success. Previously, Cabrera interned at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University where he worked on a privacy security system for drones and presented research at various conferences around the country.