Hi, my name is Carlos Bravo, and I am currently a senior majoring in Computer Science at Florida State University. After graduation, I plan to work for Southwest Airlines as a Software Engineer. I transferred from Miami Dade College in the spring of 2023, and shortly after arriving, I became involved with the Data Science Fellowship at the Dirac Science Library. This program quickly became the center of my academic and professional development at FSU, giving me the foundation and confidence to pursue deeper opportunities across technology fields such as software engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality.
Being a Data Science Fellow opened the door to so many technical experiences I never expected to have. The fellowship helped me build stronger coding skills, improve how I solve problems, and learn how to support real research projects. Those skills followed me into every role I’ve taken on—whether it was working in VR development at the Rider Center, helping with network engineering at L3Harris, or doing software engineering at Johnson & Johnson and Southwest Airlines. Each internship pushed me further, and all of them were built on the foundation I developed through the fellowship. It really confirmed for me that becoming a software engineer is the path I want to follow.
The fellowship also had a huge impact on what parts of the technology sector I’ve grown passionate about. Working with researchers and seeing how data actually drives real solutions made me even more interested in Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science. Getting hands-on experience with data workflows, coding tools, and research processes helped me understand how everything connects—and it’s a big reason why I enjoy these fields as much as I do today.
Projects Completed Through the Fellowship
Most of my major projects at FSU were completed through the Data Science Fellowship, each one helping me develop new technical and communication skills:
- Podcast & Blog Series: Through the fellowship’s outreach initiatives, I produced and hosted conversations with campus technologists and created blog posts on large language models, prompt engineering, and data science in research.
- Workshop Data Analysis: The fellowship allowed me to lead analysis on multi-year attendance data for the Data @ Your Desk workshops, uncovering engagement trends and helping the library improve its outreach strategy.
- FAIR Chemistry Cookbook Project: I collaborated with researchers to test and document Python-based workflows, ensuring reproducibility and alignment with FAIR data principles—an experience that strengthened both my coding and documentation skills.
- Community Outreach: As part of the fellowship, I helped organize and support events such as Love Data Week, promoting data literacy, AI tools, and career development across campus.
- Consultation Support: I met with students to discuss their research data needs and answered questions about data analysis software, data sourcing, storage, and organization.
- Instruction & Workshops: Through the fellowship, I assisted with classroom instruction sessions and played a key role in supporting FSU Libraries’ workshops, including the AI Tools/Data Management Workshop, where we introduced students to practical AI tools, responsible data handling, and research workflows.
Across all of these projects and experiences, the Data Science Fellowship has been at the center of everything I’ve learned and worked on. It’s shaped my skills, influenced my interests, and opened the door to so many opportunities. It’s played a huge role in preparing me for a future career as a software engineer and has strengthened my passion for using technology to support research and innovation.
This blog post was authored by Carlos Bravo (Senior Data Fellow) at FSU Libraries.
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