This past summer has been one for the books for our brothers at Theta Tau Xi Chapter! Many of our members had exciting summers interning at various engineering corporations and studying abroad across the globe. We decided to catch up with some of the members to hear more about their exciting summers.
Brendan Kielczewski
“My summer internship was at Gentex Corporation in Zeeland, MI. Gentex mainly manufactures auto-dimming rearview and outside mirrors and camera based assistance systems for automobiles. Gentex also makes fire protection systems and auto-dimming windows for airplanes. As an Industrial Engineering Intern, I worked on different 5S and optimization projects. My internship was unique because I spent about 6 weeks at the Micro-Electronics Assembly plant and then another 5 weeks at the IEC (Inside Electrochromic) Glass plant. I commuted from Holland, MI to Zeeland every morning where I lived on Hope College’s campus in an apartment with other interns. I had a lot of fun going to the beaches on Lake Michigan and trying all the different breweries in the area. ”
Megan Quinlan
“I spent my summer as a Software Engineering Intern at a startup company in Madison. Moxe Health is a really cool health-tech startup that focuses on the secure transfer of medical charts to and from insurance companies. This summer I completely automated one of their chart retrieval processes that was previously done manually by the engineering team. Through this project I not only learned a lot about SQL and NoSQL databases, but I also learned 3 new programming languages! The automation project dealt with numerous existing programs, so I got to work with both back-end development and some front-end development. In my free time I also helped out on their social media sites, follow @MoxeHealth on instagram! It was a really amazing summer spent learning and helping out the engineering team.”
Frances Palmer
“This summer I interned at Madison Gas and Electric in the Energy Products and Services department where I focused on wind and solar energy projects. I spent my time analyzing spreadsheets to monitor performance of our wind and solar energy projects, while also finding trends in growth and efficiency of the projects. I was able to calculate capacity factors of MGE’s commercial and residential photovoltaic (PV) systems, find how much annual energy the systems were producing, and create an overall report showing their affect on MGE’s total electric sales. For a majority of the summer, I focused on updating and analyzing the Generating Availability Data System (GADS) for a 17 turbine wind farm that allowed me to find errors with turbines and calculate the lost energy from these errors. Also, I was lucky enough to travel to Saratoga, Iowa (where this picture was taken) to visit MGE’s project site for their soon to be 33 turbine wind farm that is expected to be complete in early 2019 and continue MGE’s Energy 2030 goals to reduce their carbon emissions and expand their renewable energy. Overall, it was a great summer and my internship enhanced my passion for renewable energy.”
Paul Nussbaum
“I went to China this summer! While I was there I was able to take Thermodynamics, EPD 397 and an intro to mandarin class with 18 other UW Madison engineers. The classes were taught by UW Madison professors with whom I formed a close relationship with. Aside from classes, I was able to explore the crazy country of China. I tried some wack foods and had some weird encounters inplaces like Beijing, Nanjing, Xi’an, and Shanghai.”
“After China I took a side trip with four friends to Vietnam. We explored Hanoi for a week and went on adventures like partying on an little island in Halong bay and riding motor scooters through rural rice paddy roads.”
“All in all—a wonderful summer and I would recommend that all engineers explore this incredible option to explore a new horizon. Contact Amanda Hammatt if you’re interested! (ahammatt@wisc.edu)”