Interning at The DECK: Jacob Dirkx

Hello! My name is Jacob Dirkx and am a 3rd year student at the University of Oregon. I am double majoring in Linguistics and Data Science and am original from Portland, Oregon, USA. I am interning at The DECK for 7 weeks and am very excited to be here!

I am fascinated by data's ability to tell stories and communicate what is happening in the world; I got to experience this most recently in collaboration with emergency medical services in Eugene, Oregon in a long-term data science project examining the effects of crisis intervention services on general medical outreach.

I also work as a research assistant at my university, where I assist in developing open-source natural language processing tools and perform syntactical & phonetic analysis. The intersection of language and technology is something I'm very interested in, whether it be generative AI or other applications. Overall, I am very excited to apply my skills at The DECK to create applications, analyze data, and more!

Outside of school, I enjoy cooking and playing a variety of musical instruments, so am thrilled to be in Osaka, a city with a reputation of having excellent food and a lively international atmosphere. I'm excited to see what the city has to offer, such as the World Expo, Takoyaki stands, and more. Though I am shy about speaking, I'm also looking forward to improving my Japanese language ability. The DECK, with its friendly staff, international clientele, and energetic business culture, seems like a perfect place to intern.

I am looking forward to meeting and collaborating with you all!