Cisco Intern's Unexpected Win Highlights Value of Collaboration and Knowledge-Sharing

Ishaan Garg, a software engineering intern on the SD-WAN Team at Cisco, recently won one of the 100 Cisco Codex Challenge awards. The challenge asked engineers to showcase how they had used Codex to automate tasks in their workflow.

Garg's journey to winning the challenge began when he listened to a former Cisco engineer discuss using AI agents and development tools on a podcast. He experimented with Codex on his own personal project, treating it as part of a larger development workflow rather than just answering questions or generating code.

When Garg joined Cisco as an intern, he came across the challenge application but initially thought it was meant for more experienced engineers. However, he decided to submit his application, which told the story of how he had used Codex on his personal project and created something real from it.