The war-torn country of Sudan is a place most students at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester have only heard about in class or on the internet, but for Mohamed Fadlalla, it’s a place he once called home.
This Computer Information Systems major moved from Sudan to Manchester in 2011, the same year Sudan split into two nations, forming the new country, Republic of South Sudan. Today, he is preparing for his senior year at UNH Manchester and is thriving at his internship at the mobile communications company Ping4. Inc.
Fadlalla joined his father in the United States and now lives with his brother, a recent graduate of Central High School. When he first arrived, Fadlalla knew only limited English. He had studied physics in Sudan, but decided that he wanted to go back to school to get a technology degree here in Manchester.
“I got a lot of help from the university and from the community,” he said. Fadlalla, a UNH Manchester STEM Scholar, was awarded a scholarship through the National Science Foundation and landed a job at the UNH Emerging Technology Center in Manchester.
It was through this job that he was connected to Ping4 Inc. and was recommended for a summer internship.
Mark Sexton, the VP of Engineering at Ping4 Inc., said Fadlalla has key skills and assets that go beyond knowledge learned in the classroom.
“The role of an intern is similar to an entry level employee. We’re looking for someone who can contribute basic-level work on a product, help us develop features and tests, and do work that needs to be done on a real product,” said Sexton. “We were also looking for someone who was willing to learn and we knew Mohamed was a sharp person and could come up to speed quickly.”
“He has a great sense of humor and interacts well with everyone. We needed someone who could fit in with the group,” Sexton added.
Ping4 is a Nashua-based company and the developer of ping4alerts!, an alert system platform and mobile safety app. Besides the UNH system, ping4alerts! is used by U.S. Homeland Security, federal and state emergency management agencies, state police departments, state fire marshals and the Manchester Police Department.
Ping4alerts!, which can be downloaded to a smartphone or tablet, sends certain messages based on an app user’s location. This location is determined by registering the device’s latitude and longitude. This location information is recorded differently by mobile phone services in the United States than it is in Europe, which makes it difficult for the platform to send and receive data needed to alert users properly.
Fadlalla’s internship assignment was to come up with a way to detect the European latitude and longitude code and translate it into a code the platform recognizes.
Fadlalla said his UNH Manchester studies have come in handy at Ping4 Inc., such as training in open-source software. There’s also been a significant amount of learning to be able to work on the company’s licensed tools and system.
“In three weeks I learned a new programming language. We spend three months in school to learn something like that,” said Fadlalla.
Fadlalla recently wrapped up this assignment, but his critical thinking helped establish the work he’s doing in the second half of his internship. In the early stages of his work, Sexton said Fadlalla came to him with another problem. Adding the system to recognize European codes could slow down the entire Ping4 Inc. computer system, which functions on cloud-based servers. The engineering team had also reached a similar conclusion and were impressed Fadlalla had recognized the problem, said Sexton.
“Mohamed is assigned to automate a weekly performance test. This will give our staff the ability to find areas that are slowing down the server and not have to spend so many man hours running it manually,” said Sexton.
Before the internship, Mohamed said he wasn’t sure what kind of career he would pursue, but Mohamed’s performance at Ping4 Inc. may make that decision easy. He and Ping4 have discussed his coming to work for the company as an employee.
“This internship has definitely influenced my career,” he said.
