DAYTON resident Dhiren Patel has autism and is non-verbal but that has not stopped him from getting a degree in cyber security and an internship with a mining company.

Mr Patel, 35, started his internship in February last year through a neuroinclusion pilot program with Rio Tinto.

The 35-year-old, whose job title is internship simulation delivery analyst, has a bachelor of cyber security from Edith Cowan University.

The simulation delivery analyst internship was ideal for Mr Patel as he had some knowledge and skills in programming and data analysis.

“My role involves building programs using programming language by converting manual methods to automated methods and analysing data to develop model inputs, validation comparison and decision context (and) defining simulation experiments and interpreting outputs,’’ he said.

“I am currently learning through some online courses about statistics and how to interpret data and I’m also doing some courses to gain advanced programming skills.

“The program has helped me outside of work by getting to learn new skills from the job. I feel excited that I have learned new things every day at work.

“I also feel proud of myself that I also get to teach other people what I learn.’’

After being accepted into the graduate program role he will be on rotation working on different projects and learning new things about the business context.

He has faced some challenges in the workplace.

“The challenge I have faced in the workplace is communication, where I have some difficulties communicating to other team members verbally.

“To overcome the challenge, I communicate to other team members by chatting via email/Microsoft Teams chat and I sometimes use my text to speech app on my phone where it reads out what I type.’’

He said the neuroinclusion program had helped break down barriers by providing support at work when he has some issues, and breaking down the issues by explaining things step by step.

“Through the program I’ve also been able to go on site visits where I get to see the train load out, how it is being operated, where my current project is working on the train load out, and seeing how it is operated in the mine sites,” he said.