Supporting the next generation to gain hands-on experience in STEM fields is critical to engaging and inspiring our future researchers and data scientists. That’s why, each year, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) offers several internship positions with our science and support teams.
We chatted with our recent 2025 Summer students, Yaohang, Jarod and Jeff to find out more about their ALA internship experience and what they’ve learned along the way.
Yaohang Li is studying a Bachelor of Software Engineering (Honours) at the University of Technology Sydney.
1. What’s your study background?
I am an international student currently pursuing a Bachelor of Software Engineering (Honours) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). I’m in my final year and I have always had an interest in software and cloud technologies. Throughout my studies, I’ve gained a solid foundation in programming, software and engineering, and I’m really excited to apply my academic knowledge to practical environment and real-world projects.
2. What was the topic you chose to focus on? What factors led you to choose this topic?
I chose to focus on DevOps engineering, which involved migrating the ALA’s Restricted Access Species Data system’s deployment process. I chose this one because it involves continuous integration and continuous delivery and cloud technologies. My interest in cloud computing and automation, along with the opportunity to work on real-world problems related to my major, made this topic quite interesting for me. Although I’m interested in other topics as well, this one suited me the best for my background.
3. What’s a new skill that you learned through the program?
I gained valuable experience with cloud technologies, particularly in using infrastructure-as-code solutions that aligns with ALA’s workflow and developed much deeper understanding of different use cases of cloud services and best practice of cloud native technology when building out the infrastructure.
I also learned a lot about DevOps and approaches to managing infrastructure. There’s always a gap between learning it from documentation and then applying that to a project. I’m also impressed how ALA manage all the infrastructure and services efficiently.
4. What was the biggest challenge you encountered during the program?
One challenge I encountered was differences between two tools we used when migrating the deployment process of API. The existing tool Pulumi made things simple by letting me set up the API with just a few basic settings, but it is highly abstracted. When I switched to using our internal technologies, it provided a more detailed and fine-grained control—I had to manually set up several pieces and make sure they all worked together. At one point, I missed a step, which led to a significant amount of time spent troubleshooting the issue. It was a real learning experience in paying attention to details and troubleshooting issues.
5. What was the highlight of your internship experience?
The highlight of my internship was successfully completing the system migration with minimal downtime. It was rewarding to see the deployment go smoothly, especially after the long preparation during this summer.
Working with my team at ALA was a fantastic experience. Everyone was incredibly supportive, and I learned so much from their expertise—especially from my mentor, Joe. Their guidance helped me apply ALA’s best practices while recreating the infrastructure, allowing us to fully automate the process when setting up and tearing down different environments.
Jarod Wright is studying a Bachelor of Science majoring in Ecology and Conservation Biology at the University of Wollongong.
1. What’s your study background?
My background is a mix of computer science and science. I’m currently studying a Bachelor of Science majoring in Ecology and Conservation Biology, with previous studies majoring in Computer Science.
2. What was the topic you chose to focus on? What factors led you to choose this topic?
I looked at the impact that the Black Summer bushfires had on Southern Greater Gliders (Petauroides volans) distribution. As a proud Wodi Wodi man, I am deeply interested in understanding how megafires like the Black Summer fires have impacted biodiversity and species distribution in Australia, especially so given the wide scale prevention of the community from continuing traditional fire regimes on the east coast of Australia since colonisation.
3. What’s a new skill that that you learned through the program?
Species distribution modelling is the biggest skill I learnt! It was a lot of fun and really eye opening to learn about, being able to go out and find data to analyse, and then to produce a species distribution map was a very enjoyable experience and it was very rewarding to produce that final output.
4. What was the biggest challenge you encountered during the program?
Managing spatial data and pushing the limits of what my computer could handle was the biggest challenge. The spatial data I was working with is quite big, and modelling is computationally intensive, so it often took a while to run and crashes were frequent, which made debugging and producing the final result a very long but ultimately rewarding experience.
5. What was the highlight of your internship experience?
The highlight of my internship was definitely getting to know the Science and Decision Support team and working closely with them, whilst spending my summer developing my R skills on a topic that I am very passionate about.
Jeff Lu is studying a Bachelor of Information Systems at the University of NSW.
1. What’s your study background?
I study Information Systems at UNSW.
2. What was the topic you chose to focus on? What factors led you to choose this topic?
The topic of focus involves gathering user requirements to redesign the user interface of ALA’s Profile Collections site. I chose this topic because I have a keen interest in UX/UI and business analysis, and this topic was perfect for me to apply these skills that I learned in university.
3. What’s a new skill that you learned through the program?
A new skill that I earned through the program was interviewing people. Before this internship, I had never interviewed anyone before, so naturally, I wouldn’t know how to structure an interview or how to ask questions effectively. Through the guidance of my supervisor and buddy in this project, I was able to learn the key techniques and methods of interviewing people, as well as what questions to ask in order to get the most insights out of people.
4. What was the biggest challenge you encountered during the program?
The biggest challenge I encountered during this internship was that I had to work remotely away from my supervisors. Personally, I enjoy collaborating face-to-face with people as it allows for more interactive discussions and immediate feedback.
5. What was the highlight of your internship experience?
The highlight of my internship would have to be meeting so many amazing people from within ALA. Even though most of us are based in different locations, I was still able to chat and have meaningful conversations with many of my colleagues. Additionally, my colleagues in the Sydney office have been super kind and welcoming to me since day one, which made my internship experience a whole lot better.
More information
If you would like to know more, see our ALA internship opportunities page, or contact us at support@ala.org.au.