Everyone has different expectations for their internships. While some students' experience is more like a summer job, where they are well aware they sit at the bottom of a company's hierarchy, others find a valuable position with a company that is willing to teach and depend on students as a part of their workforce.

Frank Houston has been lucky enough to find work with the better of those two options. Now a senior, majoring in civil engineering at Northeastern University, Houston has worked for the Natgun Corporation for three six-month co-op terms.

“The company designs and builds precast, prestressed, concrete ground water storag...Read More

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In underdeveloped parts of the world, even basic engineering skills can go a long way in areas where there isn’t easy access to necessities like water.

With this in mind, a student activist group at Curry College, ONE Curry, is using as much engineering skill and funds as it can muster to bring water to a village in the Southern Sudan of Africa.

John Abdulla was inspired to start ONE Curry by the efforts of the ONE campaign to end poverty. (See more about Abdulla on pages 14-15 of the Spring Curry College Magazine) Th...Read More

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When looking for an internship, the experience you’ll get is the most important factor, but the benefits, support and career options it offers are important too.

Considering those factors, some of the better opportunities for internships are with the government. What programs like SMART (Science, Mathematics, & Research for Transformation) and WISE (Washington Internships for Students in Engineering) offer students make them logical options, as their names suggest.

The SMART program offers scholarships and internships t...Read More

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As engineering programs report low retention rates and baby boomers reach the retirement age, companies like Lockheed Martin are being forced to take notice.

As a company that employs more than 70,000 engineers, technologists and scientists, Lockheed Martin decided to get involved in their own future. Their response was to help improve engineering education below the college level.

To this end, Lockheed has partnered with Project Lead The Way, a nonprofit group that has previously worked with large corporations like Northrop Grumman, local government and foundations to ...Read More

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The day where robotic capabilities rival T2’s T-1000, may be closer than you think.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has issued Tufts University professors a $3.3 million contract for research to create chemical robots that will have the ability to squeeze through spaces as small as 1 centimeter, grow to 10 times that size, and biodegrade.

Called “chembots,” the devices will be able to enter complex and dangerous environments, where they will use features such as landmine detection, the ability to cli...Read More

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Anyone can learn the basics of engineering, and maybe they should.

That’s the idea behind the Museum of Science’s Engineering is Elementary (EiE) program which aims to get children more involved in engineering at a younger age.

EiE is creating a curriculum that has been researched and tested in classrooms around the country to integrate more engineering into elementary school science and other topics.

The EiE curriculum is 20 units covering various science topics, using different fields of engineering and including storybooks made to appeal to and include children from around the world, of different backgrounds and abilities.

Students are challenged to apply their scie...Read More

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As the founder of a worldwide program to inspire youth to get involved in technology through robotics competitions, inventor Dean Kamen couldn’t be a better role model.

After gaining widespread recognition for inventing the Segway Human Transporter, Kamen recently presented his newest innovation, a technologically advanced prosthetic arm, at the D: All Things Digital Conference.

Kamen’s company, DEKA Research, has been working on the project at the request of the US Department of Defense to provide the increased number of vet...Read More

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The FIRST program strives to be more than just an after school activity for youth around the world. It provides career experience to engineering hopefuls and even presents solutions to real-world issues, from the minds of middle and high school students.

While participating in the FIRST Lego League competition last year, students from Belknap Middle School in Lockport, NY had the chance to present their case for alternative energy sources that they thought would be most beneficial to their community in the form of a skit. The students acted out a scene set in a Lockport plasma conversion facility in 2057 that was based on their own consideration and research.

Impressed by the ...Read More

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Eli Seidner's career in engineering started by building a robot for a FIRST competition.

As a junior at the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Seidner was a member of team 710, known as PAW, an acronym representing the two schools involved, Pine Crest and Westminster Academy, and the team's sponsor Apex. 

His experience with the FIRST Robotics Competition introduced him to the field of engineering, which led him to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and eventually to his current position at Nati...Read More

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Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY hope to revolutionize energy storage with the introduction of a nanocomposite paper battery. The product of student research, the device is only a few inches square, ultra thin, light and flexible.

Two groups of students at RPI were working on methods to dissolve paper and cast it into membranes for use in dialysis machines, and making carbon nanotube composites, using polymers. What one of the groups came up with, a thin sheet black on one side and white on the other, sparked an investigation into using paper rather than polymers. This research led to the creation of an integrated paper device that functioned as a battery.

The ...Read More

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Robots are always seen as part of the future, so getting the next generation interested in science and technology is a logical way to make our vision of robots a reality.

The FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) Robotics Competition is a program that gives teams of youth and their mentors a set of rules and a kit of parts to build robots that will participate in regional and national competitions.

This year the teams played “FIRST Overdrive” with their homemade robotic gladiators, made from kits of hundreds of parts. The ...Read More

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The title CEO Intern seems inherently contradictory, but it is an accurate description of a student-focused reality show that is in the works for this summer.

CEO Intern is a reality TV program that follows five students who will become group CEO of the cryogenic processing company, 300 Below. The students will be put in charge of a veteran staff that is likely to challenge them socially as well as from a business standpoint.

Cryogenic processing is the science of improving metals to make them last longer and perform better by exposing them to extreme temperatures. 300 Below has customers in several different industries that will provide many opportunities for...Read More

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