Photo By Brentan Debysingh | Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD) Science, Technology,...... read more read more
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As this summer wound down, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD) virtually hosted the final intern presentations for the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program (NREIP), the Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP), the Naval Educator in the Workplace Training (NEWT) Program, and the Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) programs on July 22 and July 23, 2021.
These internships are designed for high school and college students to get hands-on experience and exposure to the Department of Navy (DoN) laboratories to further their careers via mentoring while participating in research and learning about DoN’s research and technology efforts.
NSWCPD STEM Outreach Program Manager and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineer Tristan Wolfe coordinated the event, which featured 30 detailed presentations from a variety of programs across NSWCPD. Teams were determined by the individual students, and mentors and interns were free to either present as a team or individually.
“Everyone did great!” exclaimed Wolfe. “It seems cliché to say, but it’s true and I even have data to back up that claim. The judges used a rubric to judge the presentations and each category in the rubric is scaled one to five. Nearly every category in every presentation received a three, four or five from the judges. I can count the number of scores for all categories and presenters below a three on one hand, which really says a lot about the quality of the presentations.”
The projects were judged on overall appearance and organization, the skills of the individual presenters, the stated objectives of the project, background and research, design and methodology, technical excellence and execution, conclusions and future work, and the Q&A session at the end of each presentation.
This year’s presentations were hosted on two days on two different video conferencing platforms (ZoomGov and Flank Speed) due to a variety of factors.
“This year’s internships were hybrid in that some interns worked in-person in the office, while other interns worked entirely remotely, and others doing both,” said Wolfe. “Some interns worked on controlled unclassified information (CUI), so not everyone could attend or present on Flank Speed, which is the only approved teleconferencing tool for CUI.”
Additionally, the technical hiccups inherent to virtual presentations (WiFi, screen sharing, etc.) and the coincidental timing of sunsetting video conferencing software posed another issue. Thus, Wolfe implemented two different software formats that accommodated all parties.
“Because there was work that we do that simply can’t be presented in a publicly releasable forum, we had to make the decision to run two different sessions on two different platforms so everyone was able to present to the fullest extent possible,” explained Wolfe.
Results
After the first day of presentations on ZoomGov on July 22, Sean Harvey (“Estimation of Machinery Dynamic Displacement from Accelerometer Data”) came in third, Kaitlyn Sitch (“Considerations for De-Ionized Water Applications and Power System Modeling”) took second, and the team of Sohom Roy and Mabel Lu (“Development of an Ansys Fluent Workflow for Axial Fan Simulation and Flow Around Objects”) placed first.
“We're really thankful for having been named first place, especially since we were the very last presentation of the day and saw so many well-made and insightful presentations go before us,” said Lu. “I do appreciate that the work we put into developing our skills and workflow was acknowledged.”
“I was super surprised that we won first place,” added Roy. “There were many well put together presentations that showed some cool work, and we had to answer some tough questions that really made us think about the work we had done and how we had accomplished our tasks. It was great that the mentors acknowledged all the work we had done.”
The presentations on July 23 took place on Teams / Flank Speed, and were only open to government civilians and contractors due to CUI factors. Third place went to Christopher Alfonso (“LCS Independence Class Advanced Engineering Control System-AECS Quarter Deck Panel-QDP Replacement”), Nick Genovese (“Submarine Life Support”) took second, and Ellen Hueber (“Quality Assurance”) won first place.
“It was a great experience to work at NSWCPD,” said Hueber. “I had the fortunate experience of having a great and very attentive mentor. The people in my code were always there to help and answer my questions. It was a little bit of a learning curve when I first started with all the acronyms and everything, but with the help of my code, I was able to catch on quickly.”
NSWCPD employs approximately 2,800 civilian engineers, scientists, technicians, and support personnel. The NSWCPD team does the research and development, test and evaluation, acquisition support, and in-service and logistics engineering for the non-nuclear machinery, ship machinery systems, and related equipment and material for Navy surface ships and submarines. NSWCPD is also the lead organization providing cybersecurity for all ship systems.
| Date Taken: | 09.22.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 09.22.2021 11:49 |
| Story ID: | 405768 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 384 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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