Miami Engineering prepares future scientific and industry leaders by building hands-on education into its curricula, making sure students have the tools they need to succeed professionally before they graduate.
During a job interview with IBM, Taylor Washington sensed that cloud computing skills might put her over the top. Ashley Caples, who’s known Washington since their Hammond Weekend in 2016, also wanted to grow that same skill set. It didn’t take long for them to decide to make cloud computing the focus of their case study for Simulation Model class.
Faculty mentors encouraged the team to submit their case study to the IISE Southeast Region Technical Paper Competition. What started out as a class project simulating UMIT’s Cloud Migration from Google Drive to Box became an award-winning case study at the competition hosted by the University of Miami on February 12, 2022.
“It was our first time entering a competition like this,” Washington said. “We’re proud of how we executed our plan together, taking the case study all the way through the competition.”
“The simulation has modeled what it would be like when the school unveils its plan to migrate all students to one singular cloud software,” Washington and Caples wrote in their submission, titled Case Study: A Simulation of UMIT’s Cloud Migration for the University of Miami from Google Drive Provider to Box Provider, “The model has demonstrated that this entire process could be completed within a single semester. Furthermore, the cost of completion is estimated to be $319,449.60 and this includes the cost of the software and fairly paying the IT department employees.”
“Completing this case study helped us in so many ways,” Caples said. “It involved lots of technical writing and problem solving.”
Washington and Caples have known each other throughout their undergraduate careers, sharing a common major and taking many of the same classes, receiving this award together only months before graduation. Washington ended up receiving great news from IBM as well: she got the job!
