Please welcome RJ (Ruijing) Li and Regina Xu, UC Berkeley students who have joined the UCB CollectionSpace team for the summer. Regina and RJ are undergraduates majoring in Computer Science. They have completed the initial CS61 rite of passage, and bring some experience with Python, Java, Javascript, and other programming tools used to support CollectionSpace. They have hit the ground running -- helping to wrap up the Quality Assurance testing for v4.2, fixing outstanding bugs (and finding a few new ones!), and familiarizing themselves with the software used to manage the collections of five campus museums.
The UC Botanical Garden, the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (PAHMA), and Research IT are jointly funding this effort. John Lowe, service manager for CollectionSpace at UCB, is mentoring the students. According to John, "Regina and RJ will be spending the first few weeks learning the system and working on whatever CollectionSpace projects they can best contribute to." Once acclimated to the development environment, the students will focus on enhancements and fixes requested by the Botanical Garden and by PAHMA, in addition to projects that benefit the other campus collections.
RJ and Regina follow in the footsteps of previous CollectionSpace student employees. The most recent, Julian Jaffe, graduated this spring with a double major in History and Computer Science and will soon begin employment at a firm in San Francisco. The all-around success of this experience was an incentive to find fresh recruits. John then pitched CollectionSpace at several events on campus. He and RJ connected at the 2015 CITRIS Mobile App Challenge and RJ introduced John to Regina. And the rest, as they say, is history.