Makpar Summer Intern Spotlight: Griffin Blotner and Mojtaba Heidarysafa

As a company that offers an award-winning work culture that supports inclusivity, as well as personal and professional growth, Makpar also provides optimal growth opportunities for its summer interns – providing a path to viable careers in government IT. 

As a new blog post series, we are spotlighting the company’s summer interns to gain their perspectives on what they have learned in their roles and why they chose Makpar. For the first installment of this series, we offer the following perspectives from two interns supporting the Makpar Innovation Lab. 

Griffin Blotner

Griffin Blotner is a rising junior at Cornell University, studying Information Science. He is Full Stack Intern in Makpar’s Innovation Lab.

What is your favorite part of working at Makpar?

My favorite part of working at Makpar is the people. I really enjoy working with my team and the Innovation Lab as a whole -- everyone there is so great.

What is the most valuable skill you’ve gained/lesson you’ve learned from working at Makpar?

The most valuable thing that I have learned while working at Makpar is a plethora of best practices for web development.

What drew you to work at Makpar?

What really drew me to Makpar was that it is a small business. I firmly believe that one of the best parts about working at a small business is that there is a lot of room for growth.

Mojtaba Heidarysafa

Mojtaba Heidarysafa is an AI/ML Engineering Intern in the Makpar Innovation Lab. He is a PhD student studying information engineering at the University of Virginia.

How has Makpar helped you grow professionally?

Since joining Makpar, I had the opportunity to learn about how Machine Learning (ML) fits into the big picture in an industrial setting. I have also learned about data workflows in industry, especially using AWS as the cloud infrastructure to build data-driven solutions. Furthermore, I had the chance of using the educational resources provided through Makpar for ML best practices with AWS.

Tell us about your roll as an intern.

As AI/ML intern, I am working with Innovation Lab to develop ML solutions for real-world applications and integrating AI into Makpar’s offerings.

Who is your biggest inspiration at Makpar?

I really enjoy working with Tariq Islam, Director of Technology and Solutions, Aurora Parisea, Full Stack Developer, and Peter Cofrancesco, Innovation Engineer. The team is great and I am very impressed with Peter’s overall knowledge and hands-on skills!

We would like to thank Griffin and Mojtaba for all of their great work this summer!

Want to join the #MakparProud team? Learn more about career opportunities and job openings at Makpar here.