Things are going very well over here at SeekTech. I've been working here since July 2nd, making this about two and a half weeks into my internship. When I first got here I worked on testing Q-Rings, a device used for inducing a current in underground utilities so that they may be traced with a locator. The Q-Ring testing has since ended, and I have been spending my time now doing materials and design research for slip rings, which are used as rotary joints, which can carry a current from a moving joint to a stationary object. My task has been to identify what metals should be used to make the contacts and to find the most effective brush block/filament/counterface design. While the slip rings have so far proved to be my main focus, I have also on the side begun to document the disassembly of a Micro SeeSnake. All in all, I've been pretty busy here at SeekTech and have been enjoying my work.

Stephen Goodman

Everything is going good at Deep Sea. The other interns (7 others) are great guys and all the other employees treat me good. I am currently researching Iridium Satellite GPS system to integrate with a AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle). My previous project was a radio beacon for the Bounce Corer, an autonomous deep ocean sediment retriever.

Nick Foote

I have been doing quite a wide variety of jobs at SAIC. The first week started slowly with me doing odd jobs; counting change, helping to buy wood, sweeping, reading about solid works, packing boxes, and filing papers. But at the end of the first week I started doing some basic CAD drawings regarding the Mooring Systems project. I was drawing the wiring for about 6 different pieces. The second week I spent a lot of time doing CAD. David Graham had quite a few difficult CADs that needed to be created and I was volunteered to do them. The main thing I worked on was how to place about 30k of awkwardly sized equipment into a storage container. So, I was using the CADs I created and then I had to position them until they fit nicely.

The third week was mostly physical labor. I had to actually help do the setup I created. Basically, I put stuff into a big box. I also had to help on repairing an underwater laser camera system. When I say repair I mean I had to do the first step, clean.

So far this internship had been very challenging, I have already learned so much about engineering, business, organization, work environment, 401k (Yes, I have learned about retirement), etc. SAIC is a great work environment and I am really glad that I was placed here because everyone is friendly, knowledgeable, and they are just generally good people.

That is how I feel about my internship thus far, but I would like to share with you something that I'll really remember about my internship and that I do not believe I will ever forget.

It was at the end of the storage and for the mooring systems, which I created the plan for, and we had to fit two not small and not light boxes into a corner. I was 'volunteered' to get into storage unit and put them in. We measured the area to make they would fit, and they did. So, I put them in with not too much difficulty. About 5 minutes later we figured out that we could fit another smaller box underneath the two boxes I just put in. We pulled out the two boxes, placed the small one in, and then I started to put the two boxes back. The first one went in nicely, but for some reason I could not get the second one in completely. It just would not go in past 3/4 of the way. I pushed and pushed but got nothing. After about one minute of me pushing the other guys, all engineers, started to wonder why I was still working on it. One of them asked what was wrong. I said, "It won't go in.", the forbidden phrase around engineers. They were all really paying attention now. I am still pushing and out of nowhere one of the engineers kicks the box pretty hard. Wa-la, the box fit perfectly.

It was at this time that I realized what engineering is. It is a process to do anything. You began with: 1 - Planning - You must make sure that what you are doing will work. 2 - Action - Do what your plan says. 3 - Revision - Make your plan better depending on what happened during action step. 4 - Making it work - This step goes anywhere and is the most important. No matter what happens, if your plan is good or bad, you make it work no matter what remembering that quite often the simplest solution is the best. Over-engineering something is just as bad as not engineering something.

Thank you for allowing to work here at SAIC.
Zac

Everything has been going well at SonTek. The people here are very friendly, and they are always willing to help when I have questions. Working an 8-hour day for the first time has given me an idea of the demands on adults in their careers, and I have learned more about the requirements and responsibilities involved in running a business.

My project involves using Bluetooth and FreeWave radios, which will eventually be part of a river surveying system. I have been learning about how these radios work and configuring them to communicate with each other. The central aim of my project is to outfit the radios with internal antennas, so I have been devising and performing tests to determine which will have the optimum performance. I have also had opportunities to participate in other tasks, such as troubleshooting certain products for Research and Design.

Neva Fowler-Gerace

Everything is going great the people at Epsilon are very polite and have allowed me to be relaxed in times that I was nervous. Jim Blasko, Jim Girden and Stephanie are great they have provided me with a comfortable working environment. The rest of the workers in the company are also very nice they constantly talk with me and I enjoy the conversations.

So far I have worked with the inventory and checked if there are MSDS's for every hazardous material. I have been working with Jim Girden, environmental and health coordinator.

PS: Thank you for the opportunity of working in a company and learning what the work experience is like.

Felipe Mejia

Everything is going great. This is actually going to be my last week at Sidus Solutions, but thus far it was an overall great experience. The people at Sidus have been great and they are really fun to work with. I’ve seriously never had so much fun at work before. Thank you for the opportunity to work with these people.

I have done A LOT. Recently though, I have been working with circuit boards/ stuffing them, reading schematics, testing them to see if they work, etc. I have also been assembling some DC controllers for Pan/tilts that Sidus manufactures. A lot of pretty fun hands on stuff. Time has gone pretty fast but I believe that I attained very good skills thanks to the Sidus Team.

Humberto Sainz

Everything is going great at SeaBotix. I'm definitely learning a lot! I took some vacation time with my family before I started my internship there so I have only been working since the 9th of July (just over a week). So far I have helped with quality inspection of parts; looking for flaws and sizing errors using calipers.

I actually have a funny story regarding calipers. My uncle received a pair of calipers from my grandpa and didn't know what they were used for. I was happy to explain to him what their function was and how to use them! I still don't think he will ever open the box though!

I have also been put in charge of updating the manuals for the parts and vehicles SeaBotix manufactures. In order to accomplish this task, I have to know how everything works, so I'm getting to know the business pretty well. Today I put together a controller for one of the vehicles and it was pretty cool seeing how everything functions. This past weekend I went to the AUVSI robotics competition in Point Loma with SeaBotix. While I was there, I got the opportunity to fly (drive) one of the vehicles that was providing a live video feed of the competitor's vehicles as they maneuvered through the course. The live feed allowed the judges, participants, and visitors to see what was going on underwater. It was fun to have hands on experience working one of the ROVs.

I have met the president of the company and have also enjoyed working with the other employees. Everyone is very nice and have made me feel welcome.

Thank you for allowing me to have this opportunity. I'm looking forward to the rest of my internship!

Lauren Vinzant

I am at the end of my fourth week interning at Scripps Institution of Oceanography for Eddie Kisfaludy. Everything is going great. I have been fortunate enough to have had a variety of fun and interesting experiences. One day we caught a thresher shark and performed a gill profusion. Another day while free diving the kelp patties offshore, I swam with a blue whale. I have learned about and observed local algae, local species of dolphin, and other local animals. I also work in the experimental aquarium and feed the animals in this aquarium. The days vary so working never becomes dull. I am having an amazing experience at Scripps. Thank you for providing me with this opportunity.

Dana Shultz

I absolutely love working here at Hubbs Sea World and I really want to thank you for the opportunity that this internship is giving me... it is almost surreal.

Coming into the program I had so many questions about what went into making marine based projects a reality. Working in the lab as well as in the field is giving me the big picture of this career.

What I think is the most amazing part of the job is that there is always something new to learn. I have been here for three weeks now and while I am exercising skills that I have been taught, I am still learning new ones. It is a good fit for my personality because I always want to be doing something, and in this job, there is always something to do!

So far, I have been involved in every aspect of the Yellowtail project that is going on at Hubbs from the carekeeping of animals to the computer analyzing of data collected. I am learning things from every individual working here and I absolutely love it. With the close knit structure that I find here, I am able to communicate with all the researchers about their jobs and what they did to get to where they are now. I am also immersed in a completely different culture than what I find in my school environment.

I am amazed at how fast the time is flying this summer since being in this internship and I can already say that I will miss it once it is over. I love it so much that I have already decided to continue volunteering after the internship and during the school year. I am thrilled to see how the things I do are part of a bigger picture. Thank you once again for this chance and I will speak to you soon!

Michaela Dolor

The internship is going very well at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). I have worked here for four weeks, and really like the learning experience. Getting to be with people in the top of their fields shows me how much farther I have to go to be useful to society.

So far I have mostly been working on a user manual for Triton, a program that was created by SIO to use in analyzing long term (~1 year) aquatic recordings. I have been going back and forth with Sean Wiggins (my Mentor), who created the program, making the manual more relevant to users adding depth, such as a byte by byte breakdown of the XWAV files that were created for Triton, and making it easier for new users, such as myself, to understand.

Dylan

Everything is going great at SonTek. For our project, we will be putting a GPS unit on a small catamaran that will be used to measure water velocity at different points in places such as rivers. The reason for the GPS is so the surveyor will be able to know exactly at what place and time each measurement was taken. So far I have gained an understanding of how a GPS works, and have been introduced into a computer program, MATLAB; we use it to display all the data we collect from the GPS. Over the weeks, I have been taking several tests with the GPS units and we have been experimenting with differential GPS (DGPS) in order to make our measurements more accurate. I, along with the help from one of my mentors, have written some new programs to accommodate for the DGPS. We have used two GPS units for the DGPS and we use the program we wrote to use both measurements to cancel out the differences between them to get more accurate.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity.
David Carte

After three weeks of working at the Hubbs-Seaworld Research Institute in Carlsbad, I’ve been able to do many jobs. It is a little different from what I expected, but it’s all been very interesting. The people are all very nice and fun to work with.

The facility is responsible for breeding white seabass and sheephead fish. I’ve helped prepare the food for the broodstock, cleaned and sterilized tanks, and transferred fish between tanks. Some of the most interesting work has been helping to conduct tests and collect data related to the buoyancy of the eggs in different spawns. I’ve been able to use cool instruments like a high power microscope and a salinity meter.

I’m learning a lot, and I really appreciate the opportunity to participate in the MTS internship program.

Simon Weber

Everything's been going so great! I'm having a blast and really gaining some excellent experience at Fugro-Pelagos. I've been setting up displays around the office with presentations about "20 small ways to save the planet" and making sure that all recycling bins in the office have proper signs stating what employees can and cannot put in them. I also put together an employee orientation/ induction packet on a CD to allow and promote paper conservation to maybe save a tree or two. I'm having such a great time at my internship position!

Kaitlyn Richards

Everything at SeaBotix is going great. All the people are very friendly, as are the other interns, and I am greatly enjoying myself every day. One of the most interesting things I've done so far was to pilot our ROV's in the recent AUVSI competition, in which teams from across the country competed to build the best autonomous submersible. SeaBotix sponsored many of the teams there, providing 66% of the teams with thrusters. The other interns and I got to fly a SeaBotix LBV (Little Benthic Vehicle) after the robots as they competed, and film them. We had live feeds of the competition on several large screen TVs so people could watch the competition as it occur ed, and our tent was always full of nervous competitors watching their robots and us (piloting our own robot). That was most definitely an experience of a lifetime. Back at normal work, i have been working in QA (Quality Assurance). The branch is very new, so i have been enjoying the process of setting it up. My supervisor and I are writing the inspection forms for the various incoming parts as we go, and figuring out ways to rework out-of-spec items in our machine shop. If an item has a recurring problem, it is us to either get Engineering to change its design, or to go to the manufacturer and discover why their parts are not up to spec. It is very engaging and fun, and I will be sad when it all ends in only one and a half weeks.

Sam Reineman

I really like working. I’m not going to lie. Getting up early during the summer and working for 8 hours a day sucks, but for a first job it’s great. I feel I could even handle more than they (SeaBotix) expect of me. I am building test benches to test electrical components and it’s a fun task. This is a very good opportunity.

Chris Barber

So far, everything is going well at SIO. I have my own desk and computer to work with, and I am able to be independent while still operating on my tasks. I share office space with a UCSD student. He has been very helpful and has been a joy to talk to as well. I feel very excited about the things that I am learning through the internship so far. It has improved my computer skills and knowledge, my organizational skills, and my problem solving abilities.

As of right now, I am logging and organizing data for Greg. I examine sound files recorded out at sea, and I isolate the pieces that could be used for statistical analysis. Greg is going to submit a paper for publishing, and he wishes to include some of this data that I am collecting. Also, I am converting data from previous research trips into formats that can be played as audio files, because the data is primarily acoustic recording. I have converted files gathered from Antarctica, so I am excited to see the unique differences that they contain in relation to the data I have been logging which has been primarily from Southern California.

Over the next few weeks, I am expecting to take the data processing a step further. The data that I have logged and organized will then be used for statistics. Furthermore, Greg has informed me that I am welcome to help him build another hydrophone array in a few weeks. This is exciting to me cause I have always been interested in the construction of devices.

I'm sure that I still have much to learn over these next few weeks, and I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge further.

Adam Darley

I'm doing well. I am working with a software program called SolidWorks. I build 3D models of the company's equipment such as ADCPs and tidal turbines. Their equipment is used to measure currents of the ocean or river.

Nicole Taplin

My internship at the Scripps Institute (Ed Parnell) is going all right. Getting used to 8 hour days took a while. So far I spent a week helping a grad student sort her samples she took from the sea floor as part of her project on wavy turban snails. Due to the nature of the samples, we were sorting things with a paintbrush and a microscope. I did learn about the benthic animals that I was finding. These last few weeks were spent on analyzing pictures taken from cameras along Southern California's Coast. These pictures are taken every 15 minutes and are one of my mentors many projects. Specifically they will be used to determine fishing levels in the designated areas. Although I have a computer program to help me in my analysis, it is still long, arduous work. However, everybody is very nice about taking me around to different places for breaks; we went to the Stephen Birch Aquarium, library, I dissected a wavy turban snail, and tomorrow I am going on a snorkeling trip to see the bigger versions of the animals I was sorting and help collect data. My internship has definitely been interesting.

Kailey Banks