Experiences from Summer of 2011.
| Everything’s been going great. I’ve had a great experience at SeekTech so far and am looking forward to the rest of the internship. Thanks for this great learning opportunity.When I started at SeekTech I was able to learn to use SolidWorks and then was assigned to a project where we are attempting to manipulate a camera that is on the end of one of their video inspection systems. As I’ve worked on this project I’ve had great opportunities to learn about designing and machining parts as well as learning from various mechanical and electrical engineers. I’m really grateful for this internship because of the insight it is giving me into the engineering process and the experience of being inside a business.John Akagi Rancho Bernardo HS |
| Thank you again for this wonderful opportunity to Intern at Southwest Fisheries Science Center. This past week from July 5 – July 8 was my first week on the job. I am so far having a wonderful experience and have been welcomed into the ROV Department as their new intern. I have been working on their underwater remote operated vehicle (ROV) and analyzed video of rockfish and other marine animals and cataloged their habitats. I am really enjoying the dual nature of my internship, getting to do both engineering and biology. I am sure I will have much more to say when I have completed a full three weeks of interning, but so far I am enjoying the experience tremendously.Thank you again, Andrew Vazquez St. Augustine High School MTS Intern at Southwest Fisheries Science Center |
| My internship at Seektech is going extraordinarily well. Everyone here is very friendly, and my schedule is pretty flexible which is quite nice. My project involves preliminary research on a phenomenon related to lasers that we hope to utilize in one of our products for measuring velocity. I spent the first week doing in-depth research on the phenomenon which involved reading patents, portions of monograms, and a graduate thesis. I also learned how to use Solidworks so that I was able to design and create parts for my project. I was even able to watch the machinists create the parts I designed in the machine shop, which was really interesting. I’ve moved on now to experiments with lasers that are helping me learn more about properties of the phenomenon and help me figure out the best approach for what we want to do with the product. I’ve also been able to learn how to use a spectrometer, a device that quantitatively measures properties of light for analysis. I’ve been learning how to use Mathematica and MATLAB for image processing which we hope to get started on soon. I am constantly amazed by how much I’m learning about mechanical engineering, physics, and the corporate environment. Thank you so much for this incredible opportunity.Kyana Van Houten Coronado HS |
| I am happy to tell you that working at SeekTech has been an amazing experience for me. All of the people there are extremely nice and very helpful. I feel engaged in my work and my project is extremely interesting. I am currently working on investigating if vibration motors (similar to the ones that are in cell phones) can be used to manipulate objects mechanically. In order to do this I have been using SolidWorks to graphically see my designs come to life. Using this tool we are able to see how all of the components of our prototypes will fit together and adjust our design accordingly. We are also able to accurately calculate the center of mass in our designs in order to make balanced models. Once we have a design we want to go with, my partner and I either have the parts machined or printed on FDM printers. Using the 3D printers we are able to quickly make a prototype of any complexity relativity cheaply.Weekly project review meetings with the owner of the company, and my direct mentor allow for review as well as new ideas that we can try in the next week. I really find these helpful because usually questions are answered that I wouldn’t have otherwise come to conclusions on. As well as new questions that get us thinking about our current plan of attack and design strategy. Over all this has been one of the greatest experiences I have ever had the opportunity to participate in. I look forward to the coming weeks at my internship.Henry Gruenbaum High Tech High |
| This was my third week at SeaBotix and so far I have learned a lot. I have been able to work with the 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) program called SolidWorks. I spent the first few days getting acquainted with the file system, learning the proper locations and nomenclature for parts as they are designed and then sent to production. After that, I have been working in Sustaining Engineering. My first project was updating the model of the Search And Rescue Vehicle, or SARbot. I would make sure that the SolidWorks model of the vehicle was up to date with the newest parts and assemblies, and replace older parts if needed.The next week, my project was creating SolidWorks models, and then exploded diagrams of different products for use in the SeaBotix user manuals. I made one for the power supply for their newest vehicle the vLBV and for all 8 different models of the Integrated Navigation Control Console or INCC.I have also had the chance to work on creating work instructions for some of the assemblies. I worked closely with some of the assembly technicians in production, to see and document how things are assembled. From this I was able to create detailed work instructions for the assemblies which lacked them. I have learned about the parts data base and have become very familiar with many important parts and components. So far my experience at SeaBotix has been very interesting, and I have learned a great deal.
Foster Collins |
| I have been working at Sidus Solutions for the past three weeks now. The experience and knowledge I gained working there last summer has allowed me to transition smoothly into this year’s internship. My co-workers are extremely friendly and are always available to help me whenever I have questions or need help with something. The first two weeks were spent taking inventory and filing papers; tedious work but necessary. At the end of my second week, I was sent to a short introductory course on SolidWorks, a 3D CAD design program. Since taking the class, much of my time has been devoted to updating parts and drawings as well as creating a new housing for a camera. I am really enjoying using SolidWorks and this experience is helping to confirm my interest in engineering. The first three weeks of my internship have been thoroughly enjoyable and I am very grateful for the opportunity.Philip Weber Scripps Ranch HS |
| My internship with Sontek is going great. I am enjoying it. The employees are great and fun! The company through a potluck this Wednesday and they had competition for best foods (the employees can cook well). Plus I participated in a watermelon-eating contest. I would love to work for this company in the future.For the most part of my internship I have been working on mechanical engineering related things; mostly CAD using Solidworks. That is something I enjoy, designing and coming up with concepts for fixtures. The first two weeks were spent designing fixtures for a testing Sontek instruments and my third week, which ended today, I designed two fixtures for testing a new instrument that has not even made it into production. I understand my ability and knowledge is minimal in these professions but I like that the engineers actually gave me a real task to do.Ricardo Rivas Preuss HS |
| First of all I would like to say thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I have completed four weeks working with Diving Unlimited International and so far I have learned a lot of things from putting electrical components in a drysuit to installing hardware in a computer to even learning how to sew. These past four weeks have been really exciting due to the many skills I learn to some that I even teach them. The first thing that they told me on the first day was, “Here put these things in the computer and build it.” In the past i have taken a computer apart but never put it back together. With the help from Dan and Bob (my instructors) I was able to build the computer and surprisingly it still works up to this day.Everyday at DUI is a great day, due to everyone is very friendly and are there to help me and others others as well. Susan Long (the President of the Company) is a person with a great personality, she wrote for my computer’s screensaver “Ruben The Great” and now recently is “Ruben The Most Awesome”. I enjoy working with everyone and just saying a friendly hello to the people I meet. I especially enjoy being part of the meetings because it makes me have a sense of what i can expect for when I start working.As of right now I am currently working on a new design for a heating pad that will go in the sock. I have cut out fabric, calculate where the wires will go, sew the pieces together, and then test them out.
Thank you again and I cannot wait to see what they have me do next. Ruben Puentes |
| I am really enjoying my summer here at the SIO Whale Acoustics Lab. Everything is going well and I am learning a lot from my mentor, other employees in the lab, and fellow interns. My experiences have expanded my knowledge of programming in MATLAB, Access and MySQL databases, the use command windows, and computers in general. For example, I helped write a MATLAB function and migrated the lab’s database from Microsoft Access to MySQL. I am learning how to use Triton and Processing Stream (MATLAB programs written in the lab) to process data collected in the field and turn it into information that can be easily viewed and assessed by analysts. In addition, I also help quality check the whale acoustic data and document the processing of the data in the database. Assisting with the data processing role in the context of a vertically integrated lab has increased my interest in technology and the role it plays in the larger context of research. Working right next to the beach is, of course, just a bonus. Thank you for this opportunity!Amy Lyden Canyon Crest HS |
| I have started my fourth week at Fugro-Pelagos and I am doing well. The people at Fugro-Pelagos are very friendly and I have been introduced to everyone. I consider Fugro-Pelagos a family because every special event is brought with so much laughter and joy. It is a truly exciting place to intern.So far I have finished an online training for ArcMap and ArcCatalog, which is used more than anything at Fugro-Pelagos. I have also worked with Google Earth to familiarize myself with major places where projects mainly take place. I have recently finished updating their water clarity images from projects dating back as far as four years ago. I would go through each file and gather the information needed for the metadata and as well as for the image. In the past few weeks, I have been researching a potential project site near Northeastern Canada and the Arctic region. I have looked up available airports in the region and have used Microsoft Word and Excel to organize all my information. I was given a book that dealt with Arctic water characteristics, weather conditions, geographical boundaries, tides, and currents. The objective was to find information on that area to prepare the crew that was going on that project. Overall, I am greatly enjoying my stay at Fugro-Pelagos and am so thankful to have been given this opportunity.Kherishma Shah Rancho Bernardo HS |
| Everything here at Teledyne RDI is going great. I have been able to meet some great people with interesting backgrounds and then have been able to work with them to work through any problems that we have had. Everyone here is very friendly and helpful as well as very knowledgeable.So far I have mostly been testing their software and finding bugs in it. The program I am working with right now is called Velocity and it takes data from an ADCP (Advanced Doppler Current Profiler) and converts it into detailed graphs. These graphs range from 3D to line to profile graphs that allow you to look at the data in almost every way. This allows everyone from the navy to researchers to observe and record the water’s direction, velocity, track the ocean floor, as well as gather many other pieces of data such as temperature and pressure. I have also been looking for bugs in another program that allows you to easily set up and deploy the ADCP. You can adjust settings like ensemble time, length, type of deployment and much more. One of the days, the firmware had a bug in it and caused a chip in the circuit board to overheat and break so I was able to work with some of the engineers and watch them figure out which one it was and then replace the part before reassembling it all. When I find a bug in the programs, I make sure it is repeatable and then document it though screen captures and data sets before I put it on a website called bugzilla. This website allows people to easily report bugs and then assign them to the corresponding person by selecting their operating system and the location where the bug occurred (graphs, data, etc.). One of the programmers even took some time out and showed me some basic coding programs and helped me understand how programming works. I really appreciated this because this will come in handy for engineering in college.I just wanted to thank you again for setting up this internship program so people like me can get some real world work experience in the fields we are interested in. This has been an invaluable experience to me.
Nick Kemme |
| During these first three weeks, things have been going great. At SAIC, the employees are very friendly and willing to help me. It has been a wonderful experience. I have learned many new things. I have done many things that were fun. I have helped with inventory by using a barcode scanner and also taking pictures for the database. I have also helped clean up the maintenance logs on their database as well as digitizing manuals. Today, they took me out on a boat, in order to make sure it worked ok. I am really grateful that I have had this opportunity.Thank you, Ryan Garcia Mira Mesa HS |
| Being the new intern at Teledyne Impulse has been both an awesome and a learning experience. Throughout my time here I have been taught many things, whether it was how to put the parts together, or how to use the pressure vessels to test the products, it is all something new. My first week and a half the company had me working on the production floor, learning how to use most if not all of the machines, and how to create and test the finished product. I went from station to station each day learning new techniques and developing new talents, along with making new friends. Although I was a bit nervous at first, I soon overcame my fear of the machines and took control of the situation. I learned how to work with epoxy, neoprene, and polyurethane, which were all really fun, except for the times when I would touch the hot metal on accident. So far this has been one of the best experiences in my life, and I know that I will make long lasting friendships with the people that work here, and will learn things that I will use for the rest of my Engineering career. And although I know that this internship is going to take up the rest of my summer break, I don’t mind and I am happy to be here.Diego Ceron Preuss School |
| First of all, thank you so much for this fantastic opportunity. I am really enjoying spending my summer at SeekTech. I cannot believe how much they have taught me in the short three weeks I have been working there. From using the tools in the machine shop, to mastering 3-D CAD programs, SeekTech is truly a fountain of knowledge. It is really satisfying to run tests, get results, and see science in action. Coincidentally, there has been a recent breakthrough in a laser project and I am being called upon to work on that project as well. This project will allow me to learn to program in MATLAB and learn about laser speckles. I am really excited to be able to work on this new project. I am also really enjoying working in a professional atmosphere where I would not have the opportunity to do anywhere else. Once again, thank you for making this possible.Sajan Sanghvi Canyon Crest HS |