  **Title**: Energy in the North - Caden Kelly
**Date**: September 16, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Caden Kelly

00;00;00;03 - 00;00;12;25 [Caden Kelly] Remote communities, anybody who doesn't know like a lot about networking, also like reskilling, like people who are trying to reenter, I guess, the workforce or anybody who wants to learn about networking in general. I guess, like the biggest focus would be those rural communities. Like that was the idea with the project.

00;00;12;25 - 00;00;40;19 [Caden Kelly] This week on energy in the North, I spoke with Caden Kelly, a summer intern with the National Science Foundation. Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Caden is an electrical engineering and computer science student at the University of California, Berkeley. And he's also pursuing a minor in Southeast Asian Studies. He's working with John Havelack on cybersecurity, and I began the conversation with Caden by asking him what he's been doing in his internship.

00;00;40;19 - 00;00;18;11 [Caden Kelly] Most of what I've been doing this summer, at least, like the bulk of the work, is building kind of a portable network training ground. And I basically just built, like, on a little cart, the physical devices for a network. And then going into the software for it, you can abstract the hardware to be like a lot bigger and like, feature a lot more software than you might initially think available. So it's four different servers that you can basically create like virtual computers on and move them around. So I've created like a bunch for different students and then given them different permissions. And each of them is accompanied by kind of like a firewall we configured, and we're just having students interact with their network firewall.

00;01;18;11 - 00;01;25;02 [Amanda Byrd] That sounds very computer techie. Why would somebody want
 a device like this?

00;01;25;02 - 00;01;56;22 [Caden Kelly] Well, I guess the background for the project is that it's kind of supposed to target, like, rural 杏吧原版n communities and their energy microgrids. If one device or like host on that subnet gets infected with a virus, it can very easily spread to everything else. So I guess the big idea of the project is that we're trying to teach people the value and how to configure, like segmented networks, with their associated firewalls so that traffic is separated. You can like, diagnose where a problem is without it spreading. And then you also have, I guess, like defenses at the edge of that network to control what goes in and out.

00;01;56;22 - 00;02;02;06 [Amanda Byrd] And so your targeted audience might be for the remote communities themselves.

00;02;02;06 - 00;02;18;14 [Caden Kelly] Remote communities, anybody who doesn't know like a lot about networking, also like reskilling, like people who are trying to reenter, I guess, the workforce or anybody who wants to learn about networking in general. I guess, like the biggest focus would be those rural communities. Like that was the idea with the project. But the training
 ground and module should be open to anybody.

00;02;18;14 - 00;02;24;18 [Amanda Byrd] So John is very skilled at cyber security. Has that been fun to work with him?

00;02;24;18 - 00;02;25;16 [Caden Kelly] Yeah, I've been learning so much every single day. I actually when I came into the internship, I didn't know, like Linux, which is what you use to kind of navigate the digital like environment of all the computers and the software. And I didn't know anything about networking. So I spent like the entire week, like staying late in the office, trying to learn and as much as I could. And I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of it now. And he used to work on, like, a, I guess, Arctic research vessel, and he would work in the network system there. So it's super cool to ask him about that stuff.

00;02;52;16 - 00;03;03;20 [Amanda Byrd] So it seems interesting to me that a student from Berkeley would want to come to Fairbanks, 杏吧原版 to study computer science. Why did you choose Fairbanks?

00;03;03;20 - 00;03;32;26 [Caden Kelly] So my sister lives up here, and my family actually previously spent some time up here. And then. Well, I was looking for, like, opportunities up here. This one, like, sparked my interest and I just applied and it went well. I kind of imagined the people up here not being as friendly as they are, but they're always so nice and willing to invite you to things and willing to, like, get to know you and interact with you. It's been pretty welcoming. I, I mean, I guess, like with everything, you shouldn't, like, judge things before you experience them usually. But it's been a very nice experience and everybody has been super kind.

00;03;32;26 - 00;03;33;20 [Amanda Byrd] So the research experiences for undergraduates is for students who have not yet done research.

00;03;40;06 - 00;04;24;28 [Caden Kelly] Yeah. So I guess on the note of not having done research before when I applied, that was true. But right after I applied, I joined, of like a, a lab with the space sciences lab at Berkeley. And they would do data analysis with the satellite that was going around Mars. And I guess what I know just coming here and what I really enjoyed, that it's a lot more hands on, than that was because I wasn't working with anything like, physical. I like being able to, like, see the network working that I'm working with, see, like, a lot more, I guess, visuals for it, that I don't have to manually configure myself in something like Jupyter Notebook. And it feels like this is going to have, like, a lot more of a direct impact to people helping them maintain, you know, their energy systems or their own personal networks, rather than just trying to find, like, anomalies in data that has been around for like the past decade and continuing,

00;04;24;28 - 00;04;28;14 [Amanda Byrd] You are one of 12 interns in a cohort.

00;04;28;24 - 00;04;50;29 [Caden Kelly] It's nice to have, like, a community we're all having kind of, I guess, relatively similar experiences. Like, sometimes I'll be in my kind of area of the office with, five of the other interns, and they'll be like, oh my gosh, I've been stuck for so long. And I can just, like, resonate with a lot. And it's nice to have a roommate who's another intern. Just because rooming with somebody who's having similar experiences is kind of nice. And we can kind of talk about their day and relate to each other easily.

00;04;50;29 - 00;05;04;10 [Amanda Byrd] Caden Kelly is a summer intern at the 杏吧原版 Center for Energy and Power. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for ACEP. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep, and follow us on social media.