Every summer since 2003, small teams of two to five UC San Diego engineering students have been sent out to local companies, tasked with applying their skills and collaborating with each other and company engineers to complete a real-world project. For Robert Moroto, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD in mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering, his Team Internship Program (TIP) experience was so positive that he not only participated for three summers with the same company, but wound up working for the sponsor company, Solar Turbines, once he completed his PhD.
 |
| Jacobs School alumnus Robert Moroto |
Moroto is now a development engineer in systems and analytics at Solar Turbines, the San Diego-based designer and manufacturer of industrial gas turbines for electrical power generation, marine propulsion, natural gas production and a variety of other uses. He said his TIP experiences were crucial in preparing him for this role.
“There are probably too many ways TIP was beneficial to list them all,” Moroto said. “If a student’s goal is to do engineering full-time, then, in my opinion, TIP is as close as you can come to getting that experience in a realistic setting with the additional benefits of working in a very close-knit team while in the context of a well-structured program.”
Moroto didn’t know many engineers growing up, so participating in the Team Internship Program helped him get a sense of what a day-in-the-life could be like for an engineer, gaining a better understanding of the workflow, expectations, constraints, and opportunities of engineering in a commercial setting.
Over the course of the three summers that he participated as a TIP intern with Solar Turbines, Moroto and his teammates were able to develop a virtual sensor to estimate fuel density from data measured by existing non-density sensors on gas turbine engines; investigated an algorithm for estimating the energy content of fuel entering a gas turbine engine; and studied several different methods for reducing the start-up time of Solar Turbines’ gas turbine engines.
“The biggest reason I decided to pursue a TIP opportunity was because each project is focused on a small team operating in a non-academic setting,” said Moroto. “The advantages of this style of internship really cannot be overstated. The commercial/non-academic setting of TIP is important because projects need to satisfy realistic types of complexity that will not be encountered in school, such as making sure their work can be applied to an entire existing product line, where each product has its own specifications, for example.”
Moroto recommends that any student even slightly curious about TIP keep an eye on the projects listed each year, and take the leap to apply for any that are of interest.
“If you don’t succeed, the interview process alone is a great experience. If you land a project, then you will probably be given a rare opportunity that may potentially kick start your career.”
Students interested in participating in the Team Internship Program next summer can find more information here. TIP recruitment runs from October through April, so it’s not too early to start thinking about applying!
For companies looking to sponsor a team of two to five engineering students for a summer project, get more information and complete the project description form here.
No comments:
Post a Comment