December 12, 2022
Steve F. Mbouadeu ’22CCPS graduated in May from The Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and a minor in Social Justice: Theory and Practice in the Vincentian Tradition—and is now happily employed as a Software Engineer at Google working on Google Maps.
His advice for current and future computer science students is simple: “Work very hard while you are in college and really learn the fundamentals in computer science. Distinguish yourself from the group and show that you really care about what you’re doing. Professors and job recruiters will notice and that will lead to new opportunities. That is what will make you stand out and open doors for you.”
Mr. Mbouadeu’s interest in technology began in high school when he learned the foundations of computer science. It motivated him to learn more in college. The summer before he began pursuing his degree at St. John’s, he joined the Google Computer Science Summer Institute. There, he explored and learned about various technologies being used in the industry and how to apply them.
“That experience was monumental for me because it led me to develop a passion to learn more about the influence of technology,” Mr. Mbouadeu said.
During the fall semester of his sophomore year, he started working on a project called Software Design Methods with Syed Ahmad Chan Bukhari, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Division of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Science, and Director of the Healthcare Informatics degree program. Dr. Bukhari explained to him how this project could potentially reshape the health-care informatics industry.
"Steve has worked at the Bukhari lab since 2020 to bridge the digital health information divide and publish," said Dr. Bukhari. "He completed his degree in a record time, worked on a National Science Foundation project, published several papers with us, and now successfully joined Google. Steve is a role model to our current and upcoming students, and our entire lab feels proud of his success story. His success at Google is the result of his diligence and hard work, and the manner in which he excelled in his academics and research will serve as motivation to many."
Although Dr. Bukhari worked with other students in the past to develop prototype versions of the application, he tasked Mr. Mbouadeu with building base functionalities of the final application from the beginning. They worked together extensively; Mr. Mbouadeu drove the software development and Dr. Bukhari was responsible for the research. Their work led to publishing multiple papers, including “Towards Structured Biomedical Content Authoring and Publishing,” “A Sociotechnical Framework for Semantic Biomedical Content Authoring and Publishing,” and “Biomedical Scholarly Article Editing and Sharing using Holistic Semantic Uplifting Approach."