Rebecka Lester Internship at Montana Bureau of Mines & Geology (MBMG)

Rebecka interned with MBMG over the summer of 2021 and into the continuing school year. She worked as a research assistant under Luke Buckley, a Data Scientist with the Bureau. Rebecka’s main projects involved working with the teams involved in the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative project (Earth MRI) — an MBMG/USGS funded project to identify critical minerals, and the MBMG Data Preservation Program — designing effective software products to deliver historic mining and mineral data to the public. To this end, she was responsible for interviewing field professionals, developing effective database structures, public web applications, and data-protection procedures to create text-based and map-based web applications.

 

This internship gave Rebecka an insight and appreciation for the vast mining history Montana has, as well as, a greater understanding of the enormous team effort it takes to provide information to the public. Overall, Rebecka is grateful for the opportunity to work with professionals across many different fields and to explore the database development field firsthand.