Our Karsun Innovation Center hosts future technology experts every summer for our annual internship program. Computational Modeling and Data Analytics student Namrata Hari joined this year’s class to advance her data science skills while diving into complex, innovative projects. In this interview, she shares her experience in the Innovation Center environment, contributing to center projects and uncovering her path to finding her next. 

Finding Her Next: Data Science to Social Impact

First please tell us about yourself. Where are you going to school? What are you studying? What do you like to do in your free time?
Namrata: Hi, I am Namrata! I am a rising sophomore studying Computational Modeling and Data Analytics at Virginia Tech, with a minor in Computer Science and Mathematics. During my free time, I enjoy dancing, singing, and watching movies.

What do you want to do after this internship? What are your career goals? 

Namrata: After completing this internship, I aim to participate in professional events and conferences to enhance and sustain my networking skills. My career aspiration is to become a data scientist focusing on complex data projects that extract valuable insights and foster social impact.

Building the Future of AI Accelerated Modernization

In addition to researching and developing solutions with emerging technologies, the Karsun Innovation Center builds toolkits for our teams using these evolving solutions, industry best practices and under guidance from industry experts. One of these toolkits is ReDuX AI, a set of tools and practices for AI accelerated modernization. As part of her internship, Namrata worked with the team developing future enhancements to this toolkit.  

Could you share a little bit about the project you worked on as part of this internship? What challenge does it solve? What technologies and tools are you using?
Namrata: Throughout the initial weeks of the internship, I focused on developing a task management application using Java Spring Boot and React. This project has been valuable in preparing us for upcoming tasks.

Namrata: The primary focus of my work during this internship has been testing ReDuX AI. Working within teams, we were assigned stories to complete through the use of AppPilot. During this project, we utilized Nx, Spring Boot, Postgres, Flyway, Podman, React, Comet, and Jest. Throughout this process, we were able to assess the memory, user interface, and overall user experience of the AI bot. Upon completing this project, we began addressing the defects we had previously identified.

The Innovation Center Environment

What is your favorite part about working with the Karsun Innovation Center? Is there a weekly meeting or ritual you enjoy? The opportunity to learn more or get a new certification?
Namrata: My favorite part about working with KIC is the supportive environment that I am constantly surrounded by. I enjoy seeing the work done on the projects I always hear about during our daily stand-up meetings in Show Don’t Tell. The questions asked during Show Don’t Tell helped me learn and develop my skills by showing me what questions should be asked and how to answer them. I appreciate being in an environment where I can always learn something new, no matter what.

What is your biggest takeaway from your experience as an intern at Karsun?

Namrata: My biggest takeaway from my experience at Karsun is understanding industry dynamics.  I had the opportunity to gain first-hand exposure to the inner workings of the field, including observing how various challenges are tackled and identifying best practices. This experience has been instrumental in expanding my knowledge and expertise in the industry and has significantly contributed to my professional growth and development.

Namrata worked alongside Karsun Innovation Center experts throughout her internship program. Discover how Karsun experts are modernizing for every next in our Innovation Center, among our data solutions teams, and as they use our ReDuX AI toolkit.

Recording live from the AWS Summit Washington, D.C., Karsun’s Badri Sriraman sits down with John Gilroy and the Federal Tech Podcast to discuss all things AI, accelerating legacy systems modernization and hyperlocal contextualization. Badri is the Vice President of the Karsun Innovation Center. Here, teams work to eliminate or reduce friction for the agencies modernizing their legacy systems. As part of that work, they developed ReDuX AI, a toolkit using AI resources to address common issues related to modernizing these older, more complex legacy systems. Throughout the interview, Badri and John discuss the costs and security risks associated with staying on current systems and the opportunity for AI to provide insight through hyperlocal contextualization to tackle these challenges.

Addressing the O&M Problem

The interview begins by acknowledging the drag aging infrastructure has on these agencies’ enterprise systems. The issue becomes intractable when operations and maintenance (O&M) costs become so high they take up the budget that would otherwise be used for modernization and systems enhancements. A 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report examined the 10 critical systems it identified most in need of modernization. Some of those systems were over 50 years old and, in total, cost the government upwards of $337 million annually to operate and maintain. 

In addition to the O&M costs, complex relationships between different systems components, older programming languages like COBOL, and outdated documentation all contribute to the difficulty of modernizing mission-critical legacy systems like those studied. As Badri reveals in the interview, artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to address many of those concerns. Moreover, those same AI tools may accelerate the transition, further reducing O&M costs as agencies move away from these legacy systems.

Eating the Elephant

In the interview, Badri shares a key component of Karsun’s AI-accelerated modernization methodology, hyperlocal contextualization. In a traditional modernization project, teams typically take an incremental approach. To “eat the elephant,” teams go one step at a time, optimizing as they modernize to reduce costs. The analysis required to peel away each part of the legacy system could slow down modernization to a yearslong process in highly complex systems. Throughout the process, these teams must untangle how different parts of the system integrate and work together. 

Alternatively, using AI teams still move incrementally, avoiding the pitfalls of Big Bang Modernization. However, they also use AI to identify and map these relationships within legacy systems. This AI assistance helps those teams move at a rapid pace. Working together with the human team and stakeholders, the AI can quickly create a fuller understanding of the system, its impact on the mission and provide new insights into optimization opportunities during the modernization process. This analysis is the first step in using AI for hyperlocal contextualization.

The Security Imperative

An equally pressing concern is rising security threats. The 2023 GAO report found among the chief concerns for these aging systems were outdated hardware and security vulnerabilities. The same processes that help modernization teams optimize to reduce O&M costs can also be used to move from less secure systems to more secure systems based on industry standards and best practices.

Jumping in with Hyperlocal Contextualization

With more advanced large language models (LLMs), AI tools cannot only write the code but also review, debug, and make recommendations. Powered by AWS Bedrock, ReDuX AI not only takes the insights from its eat the elephant analysis but also makes recommendations to Karsun developers using the context generated from those insights. Plus it can then incorporate best practices and security policies into those recommendations. Using a tool like ReDuX AI, the security optimization recommendations are customized to the complexities found in that legacy system, resulting in a modernization process designed to optimize costs and security. Badri discusses this hyperlocal contextualization in greater depth in the interview. 

The future is bright. In a 2019 report, the GAO shared agencies provided 94 examples of successful modernization initiatives over the five years studied. While some of the most challenging projects remain, AI tools, like those used by ReDuX, create a future where the remaining mission-critical systems modernize a possibility. Check out the full interview at www.theoakmontgroupllc.com/ep-161-how-to-overcome-the-challenge-of-legacy-systems/ or visit GoRedux.AI to learn more.

Kartik Mecheri joins GovLoop’s Featured Contributor program to share his insights on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), modern software development, architecting for cloud-native environments, data solutions, and enterprise modernization for the public sector. The co-founder and Chief Architect of Karsun Solutions, Kartik’s achievements include spearheading large-scale digital transformation projects. His expertise ensures that Karsun delivers cutting-edge services to its customers while enhancing their customers’ internal processes. He has earned industry recognition for excellence in technology solutions, keeping Karsun at the forefront of technological advancements and customer satisfaction.

GovLoop’s core mission is to help government employees to do their jobs better. It provides free resources, blogs, online training, in-person training, and online courses on topics relevant to anyone working in public service. This new series is an extension of Kartik’s position as a trusted advisor to senior government executives on the latest technologies. 

Throughout his featured contributor series, Kartik will combine Karsun’s experience modernizing complex legacy systems for federal government agencies with emerging technology research from by the Karsun Innovation Center. In addition to its research and development unit, the center also builds resource toolkits to assist Karsun’s modernization teams. As part of his column, Kartik will share Karsun’s experience using these tools to accelerate modernization.  

This includes sharing Karsun’s experience implementing its ReDuX AI toolkit. This toolkit uses AI to address the challenges associated with migrating complex legacy systems. Its AI tools analyze legacy systems built on older coding languages, such as COBOL. Next, it produces visualizations and other information on the structure of the legacy system. With this enhanced insight into the complex relationship between system components, teams can effectively plan incremental modernization of the system without disrupting the current mission-critical parts of the application.  Next, the toolkit resources use the information from the system analysis to make recommendations, enabling teams to generate code more efficiently and securely than code generated by human teams without access to those resources. More information on ReDuX is available at GoRedux.AI.

In his first post examining AI-assisted modernization, Kartik delves into the challenges and opportunities presented by the use of AI for code generation. Here, he discusses the evolving software development space as teams use AI to analyze codebases, security and regulatory compliance, and increased efficiency for mundane development tasks.  For more from Kartik, follow his Featured Contributor series at https://www.govloop.com/author/kmecheri/. 

Nikhil Davangre Basavaraj’s Innovation Center internship not only helped him prepare for an AWS certification, it also gave him real-life DevOps experience. Nikhil, a Computer Science Masters student, advanced these skills while working on tools used by Karsun teams. Along the way, he built Terraform scripts, assessed costs for AWS services and developed on Karsun’s AI-Asssisted Redux Platform. Take a deep dive into Nikhil’s process and his experience during his internship in this interview. 

First, please tell us about yourself. Where are you going to school? What are you studying? What do you like to do in your free time?

Hi all !! My name is Nikhil. I am currently doing my Masters in Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). In my free time I like to play cricket or go for a swim. I love watching movies and anime as well.

Could you share a little bit about the project you worked on as part of this internship? What challenges does it solve? What technologies and tools are you using?

Initially, I built an Appsheet app called “Fedelivery”, which helps Government Organizations spread across the US to handle deliveries of confidential items. After this I was working with a fellow intern on implementing push notifications for the KIC Konnect app using Firebase. 

Later on, I started working on DevOps tasks. My first task was to configure logging in the Application Load Balancer level in AWS using Terraform. Although it was my first time working with Terraform, with the help of my mentors, I was able to understand and complete the task successfully. 

The next task that I took over was to enable Application Logging in the EKS level, where data is logged in AWS Cloudwatch from EKS using Fluent Bit. The logs in CloudWatch are to be stored for 7 days which will then be moved to an S3 bucket for further storage for 30 days. Later on, the data will be moved to Infrequent Access Storage for 60 days, and finally, the logs will be transferred to Cold/Glacier Storage for a year. I had to use Fluent Bit for log forwarding to Cloudwatch, and I wrote the script for the above in Terraform. I was successfully able to complete the task and push the code to [Karsun’s] Redux Platform. 

Right now, I am working on implementing a Terraform script to deploy WAF (Web Application Firewall) to the Load Balancers on AWS. WAF protects applications from web-based attacks and hence is very crucial. I even have to do research regarding the pricing of the WAF service to help the company plan budget-wise. So far, the tasks are going well, and I am enjoying the work I am doing here at Karsun.

What is your favorite part about working with the Karsun Innovation Center? Is there a weekly meeting or ritual you enjoy? The opportunity to learn more or get a new certification?

I think the best part about working with the Karsun Innovation Center is the opportunity to solve real-world problems and get mentored by top-notch developers. I even got the opportunity to prepare for my AWS certification because of the Udemy course offered by Karsun. I like meeting with my mentor weekly to discuss various things, like what we did during the weekend or what blockers I am facing. The people are what make the company, and I am delighted to be a part of this wonderful team.

What is your biggest takeaway from your experience as an intern at Karsun?

My biggest takeaway from Karsun is the insights I received from this internship. It has helped me to grow both personally and professionally. My entry into the field of DevOps was made possible because of this internship. Initially, I had to do a lot of reading and research to get the tasks done, which helped me learn a lot.

Nikhil’s internship was completed with support from the Karsun Innovation Center and the DevOps Practice Area. The resources in our Innovation Center’s practice areas are available to all Karsun teams. Connect with Nikhil on LinkedIn to learn more about his experience.

Meet Luca Moukheiber. A rising college sophomore, he is a member of the 2023 Karsun Innovation Center Internship Program. He worked alongside artificial intelligence (AI), federal acquisitions and data solutions experts as part of a project team developing a federal contracts management proof of concept. In the interview below, we learn more about Luca, his project using a Large Language Model to generate code and his favorite parts about working with our Innovation Center. 

First please tell us about yourself. Where are you going to school? What are you studying? What do you like to do in your free time?

I am an Echols Scholar about to start my second year at the University of Virginia, where I am majoring in computer science. I enjoy hiking, biking, paddle boarding, and playing the guitar in my free time.

Could you share a little bit about the project you worked on as part of this internship? What challenge does it solve? What technologies and tools are you using?

As part of the Karsun initiative to explore the integration of generative AI into application development, I developed a file attachment feature used in a proof of concept application using Large Language Model (LLM) technology to generate code for certain parts of my project. I created a custom interface for users to upload, view, or delete documents as part of a reporting system. My project solves the challenge of improving efficiencies and reducing costs associated with federal contract management. This task involved working on both the front and back end to store documents in a database and the cloud. Leveraging AI to reduce manual code writing reduces development time and improves efficiency. The technologies that I used in this project were GPT-4, Angular, Spring Boot, Postgres, AWS S3, LocalStack, Jest, Nx, Flyway, and Podman.

What is your favorite part about working with the Karsun Innovation Center? Is there a weekly meeting or ritual you enjoy? The opportunity to learn more or get a new certification?

My favorite part of working in the Innovation Center is having the opportunity to develop cutting-edge solutions to novel problems. The projects evolve rapidly, with ample space for creative thinking and problem-solving. I appreciate Karsun’s emphasis on intern learning. I am currently studying to become certified as an AWS Developer Associate.

What is the biggest takeaway from your experience as an intern at Karsun?

My biggest takeaway is that keeping an open mind, being adaptable, and continuously learning are core software development skills. I came in with no Angular experience, and understanding how everything worked together in the codebase was difficult at first. However, by taking courses, I saw how the material I learned applied to the real project I was working on, enabling me to build my own feature. There were also situations where I had to change my approach because I ran into blockers, which took me extra time to figure out but strengthened my problem-solving abilities.

Luca’s internship was supported by the Karsun Solutions Innovation Center Practice Areas. Learn more about Karsun’s Acquisitions Management Modernization solutions. Connect with Luca on LinkedIn.