Who is Owen?

I (Owen Mellema) am a Software engineer from Lenexa, Kansas. I graduated from the University Of Kansas with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer engineering in the Spring of 2020. Currently, I work for Cerner, primarily working on upgrading the VA's Electronic Health Records Management system as a part of the Outpatient Pharmacy organization.

I went to JCCC for two years, where I received an Associate Degree. Despite it not being the biggest or best college, I really enjoyed my time there. The class sizes were small and advisors would meet with you one on one to discuss your future.

After graduating from JCCC, I transferred to KU, where I spent three years and received a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering. An interesting note is that during the time that I attended KU, I lived in Lenexa, which is about forty minutes away, so I rode the bus everyday.

My first job was working at Chick-fil-a. I stayed with Chick-fil-a for three years, until the end of my senior year of college, when I took an internship with Hyland and never re-applied. At Chick-fil-a, I developed a few key attributes:

• Perfectionism: I wanted things done right, goshdangit!
• Personableness: I was previously extremely shy. Working at Chick-fil-a helped me to establish my voice and become a more personable individual.
• Self-pride: Most importantly, I learned how good it feels to have done a job well and to act with integrity.

In the summer of 2019, I had an internship at Hyland, formerly known as Perceptive Software.

In the summer of 2020, I began working at Cerner. Cerner is a medical information company, who develops the massive program known as Cerner Millenium. If you have looked at your doctor's screen while you were in the doctor's office, you may have seen PowerChart, one of the many front-end applications that are a part of Millenium.

At Cerner, new employees are put through a program called DevAcademy to grow their skills as a developer. When I was on this team, I worked on a project called IRL-RPG, along with my teammates ¹⁾ KS, RI, XH, MB, and HA. IRL-RPG was a clone of Habitica for Cerner employees to use. Unfortunately, it didn't get very far, and was eventually replaced by a fork of Habitica itself. 🤷‍♂️ My awesome mentors were AP and AA.

After DevAcademy, I was taken in by Outpatient Pharmacy. Outpatient Pharmacy worked with retail prescriptions, and specifically the VA. I am still working with them, so I suppose a retrospective is jumping the gun a bit.

I also did work on some extra-curricular utilities. I worked on a plugin for IntelliJ that would handle a Cerner internal file format ²⁾, along with some fellow members of my team including JT, KW, and HH. This plugin was eventually officially adopted.

⭐I have heard of it

⭐⭐I have a functional knowledge of it

⭐⭐⭐I have an average knowledge of it

⭐⭐⭐⭐I know all of the “important stuff”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐I am an expert (or, I think I am)

There are a lot of things I am interested in. Note that interest does not mean skill or knowledge!

• Cellular Automata. They show complex phenomena from simple rules. I actually delivered a couple of talks on this topic at Cerner's Lightning Talks.
• Evolutionary Biology. Have you ever thought about the fact that we are surrounded with tiny replicators?
• Procedural Generation. Making cool stuff from random noise.
• Discrete Math and Algorithims. Like normal math, but except with no icky fractions!
• Weird Computer Ideas: Reversible Computing. Quantum Computing. Transputers. Fuzzy Logic. If it's weird, I'm in.