Koshin Ono, ’19

In the fall of 2018, Koshin Ono, ’19, was invited to be a lecturer for a two weeks-long Data Science Coding Boot Camp for incoming Master of Science in Business Analytics and MBA students at the Albers School of Business and Economics. This was no small feat for someone who initially began at Seattle U as a student without any experience in computer science.

“My main reason for choosing Seattle U is the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) offers the Graduate Certificate in Computer Science Fundamentals,” he says. With a background in political science, pivoting to an entirely different degree track made it essential to Koshin that a school offered an introductory bridge to understand computer science fundamentals prior to applying to a master’s program.

Earning the certificate ultimately paved the way for Koshin’s acceptance into Seattle U’s computer science master’s program, focusing his time on artificial intelligence and deep learning research.

While a grad student, Koshin embraced the Jesuit mission and values as an active volunteer within the community. At Washington Middle School, he helped students during an afterschool robotics program. Working alongside other volunteers “we aimed to not only make the program as engaging as possible, but also show students how they can turn their imagination and creativity into reality through robotics,” he says.

Back at CSE, Koshin landed part-time summer positions as a Coding Boot Camp teaching assistant and an algorithm tutor for graduate certificate students.

Says Koshin, “It gave me an opportunity to communicate complex technical knowledge to students who just started the program. I enjoyed the fact that I needed to stay on top of my game to teach other students.”

Additionally, he worked as a full-stack developer at the Center for Change in Transition Service (CCTS) within the College of Education and completed a summer internship as an AI/Machine Learning software development engineer with Avanade.com.

Now working as a software development engineer on the Amazon Fashion team, Koshin focuses on developing and maintaining an infrastructure for AI/Machine Learning. He attributes his ability to face the challenges of his job to his experiential learning at Seattle U.

“Classes in the certificate and graduate programs incorporate hands-on projects involving a group of people, which simulate real world working environments where it’s vital to collaborate in order to successfully deliver a product.”