Bohan Zhang - “We go? We go!” summarizes my ex-

perience at Rocscience. It’s a term Rocscience engineers

use when they are going to play double ping-pong, a sig-

nature of Rocscience’s stress-free working environment

and team-spirits. With Rocscience team’s mentoring, and

especially my mentor Tina’s help, I was able to contribute

to RS3 2.0’s development in 3D entity manipulation, re-

sult interpretation and UI improvements. When develop-

ing features for RS3 2.0, I dived into WPF programming,

gained extensive experience in real software develop-

ment, learnt how to work with other engineers and got

exposed to latest technologies such as Eyeshot, 3D finite

element analysis and many more. At Rocscience, we go,

we go as a team and we never stop going.

Scott Corkum - Working at Rocscience has been an

enjoyable and fulfilling experience. The environment is

wonderful; everyone is extremely welcoming and willing

to help whenever I encounter a problem. My role at Roc-

science was to research and develop key features of RS3, a

3D finite element analysis application used in mining and

civil engineering applications. My time at Rocscience was

spent creating models across a platform of 3D modelling

software while investigating compatibility between RS3

and industry leading alternatives. The bulk of my time was

spent coding in C#/WPF, where I developed a variety of

windows that will not only appear in RS3, but in a collec-

tion of Rocscience‘s products. The skills and techniques I

have learned at Rocscience are invaluable and I am very

grateful to have been granted this opportunity.

Bohan Scott Derek Liam Bowen Owen Winston

Rocscience Inc. Summer Interns 2016

Owen Westland - This was my second term at Roc-

science and it was just as positive a working experience as

my first term. My time was focused on the development

of Rocfall version 6. This new version of Rocfall comes

with new analysis methods and tools. I was responsible for

the development of the interface for these new analysis

methods and creating some of these tools. I created a tool

that allows users to create and import custom polygons.

This allows users to represent the rocks being modeled with

a greater degree of accuracy. I also created a new method

of sensitivity analysis for barrier design that allows users to

optimize the construction of barriers. This summer was an

excellent working experience. It expanded my knowledge

of software development and has given me a great deal of

programming experience to build upon in the future.

Derek Lam - Among many, variety is a trait that sticks out from my

Rocscience internship. Not your garden variety either, what made this

experience so special is that I didn’t have to compromise the depth and

purpose of my contribution to explore all different parts of the company,

sometimes even over the course of a single project. I worked to redesign

icons and was given the liberty alongside to reskin the UI for RS3 version 2.

Additionally in this vein, I designed marketing material, making heavy use

of the software suite to solve models derived from case studies and render

the results to the final product. For something a bit different, I constructed

a workflow from SQL Server to Outlook from scratch to reliably process

soon-to-expire maintenance plans, and created a web form to plug into

Salesforce as part of our CRM migration. All of it felt meaningful because,

as is a true and unfortunate rarity for most internships, here what I con-

tributed was taken very seriously. Critique over criticism is the prevailing

philosophy engrained in every employee, and arguably epitomized by my

manager, Thamer, who I cannot thank enough for never relenting in his

crusade to improve my work.

Liam MacKichan - My internship experience at Rocscience Inc. greatly exceeded my

expectations. I was given the freedom to pursue not only challenging, but interesting topics

and the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way to the work being done here. My

time at Rocscience was spent developing a three-dimensional slope stability software pro-

gram, Slide3D, under the supervision of Dr. Brent Corkum. Nearly immediately, I was given

the opportunity to develop valuable skills and experience in advanced slope stability meth-

ods, global optimization concepts and programming in C++, all of which will benefit me

greatly for future research and professional engineering practice. What surprised me most

about my time at Rocscience was the environment. Between the friendly, helpful employ-

ees, social events, and constant buzz in the air about the best ping pong team, Rocscience

really fosters an environment that promotes creativity and success.

If you are interested in a student internship at Rocscience Inc.

please contact us at: education@rocscience.com

Bowen Wu - The past sixteen-week internship

at the Rocscience was a time well spent. I got a

chance to explore different aspects of geotech-

nics. I did slope stability in Slide, rock sliding

in Swedge and RocPlane, and material model

testing in RS2 and RS3. I learned the pros and cons

of finite element analysis and limit equilibrium

method. I also became familiar with different

library databases.

Rocscience has great people and great things.

Office atmosphere here is very relaxing. We have

free drinks, proximity to numerous good restau-

rants, and people talking to each other all the

time. Thamer, Alireza, and Igor gave me strong

work supports; Daniel, Jason, Gavin, other interns

and I had some of the greatest jokes and stories

during lunch.

Rocscience is more than a leader of geotechnical

modeling services; the company cares about the

growth and the happiness of its people. We are

given the very freedom to explore new topics,

and we receive strong supports from colleagues.

Well, sometimes interns get “chopped, chopped,

chopped” first, and then receive the help. “Chop-

ping” is a Rocscience process for “newcomers” to

get through. Near the end of my internship here,

I want to express my tremendous appreciation

for the knowledge learnt and the fun enjoyed in

the company.

Winston Wong - My internship at Rocscience has been

a truly enjoyable and rewarding experience. In the past

4 months, I have been delegated the task to construct a

new computation engine for RocTopple and to create a

corresponding visualization. The challenging nature of the

work has allowed me to develop the ability to make criti-

cal decisions under uncertainty. From conducting research

on block-flexure toppling, to choosing and implementing

the model and designing the GUI, I was given the option

to make most of the decisions on my own. Of course, if

I run into any problems, there are always tons of smart

people here at Rocscience whom I can seek help from.

I especially would like to thank Dr. Brent Corkum for his

generous guidance and insightful ideas. At Rocscience, I

acquired knowledge not only in the field of geotechnical

engineering, but also in building software. The intern-

ship has given me the exposure to essential principles of

large-scale software development with C++ and MFC. This

internship has also honed my mathematical skills, specifi-

cally in numerical methods and advanced root-finding

techniques. I have also come to appreciate the work hard,

play hard environment that Rocscience cultivates the

moment when I finally figured out a solution to a prob-

lem that I have been struggling for hours after playing 15

minutes of ping-pong.*

If you are creative, enthusiastic about problem solving,

and wish to make an impact by solving difficult challenges,

Rocscience will be an amazing workplace for you. I can’t

wait to see how the hard and soft skills that I gained here

carry over into my future career.

* I guess that only applies if you are genuinely good

at ping-pong and you are able to beat your colleagues

on a regular basis. #noshame #jk #donthateme