The goals of the internship program are to provide the graduate students in Electronic Products and Systems Program with a first-hand exposure to the type of engineering challenges that confront many segments of the electronics industries and to directly couple their academic and research program to industry's needs. The industry internship is carefully tailored for each student so that the activities pursued contribute directly to the mission of CALCE and to the career objectives of the students.

The semester-in-industry program can occur anytime during the graduate student tenure provided the student meets the academic (and for international students, visa related) requirements. For example, an accepted full time M.S. student may start their studies during the summer semester. The student will begin working on research and taking courses during the summer and will continue these activities during the fall semester. With a six month coursework and research background, the student can participate in the industry internship in the following spring semester. At the end of the spring semester the students will return to the university and continue their studies during the summer and fall semesters and will defend their thesis and graduate during the subsequent spring.

Internships provide organizations with additional support to conduct projects and complete work, while participating students gain valuable experience and insight into future career opportunities. Although there is no fixed restriction on the timing of internships, the summer is often popular for internships. The projects for internships are carefully tailored so that they contribute directly to the students' research goals while meeting the needs of the sponsoring organization. Due to their symbiotic nature, CALCE student internships are conducted with organizations that have an ongoing collaboration with CALCE. If your organization is interested in considering CALCE students for internship, please contact Dr. Diganta Das or Prof. Michael Pecht.

The industrial internships are generally arranged with the member organizations of the CALCE Center on ongoing core research projects. The scopes of the work and the arrangements for the financial support of the student during the internship are negotiated between the member company, the student and the faculty advisor.

Potential employers considering hiring CALCE graduate students who have completed the internship and other degree requirements should read this letter (Message from CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center Director to potential employers..).

Examples of Internships of CALCE Students from 2013 :

Arvind Vasan - Schlumberger
Arvind Vasan spent the latter half of 2013 at Schlumberger's Princeton Technology Center (PTC). During the internship period, he worked towards developing health metrics for electronic systems that are used subsea for determining the presence of critical elements. Failure in such electronic systems affects the subsea surface exploration mission, resulting in monetary losses. The health metrics that are expected to be developed during the internship will allow PTC to determine whether or not the data logging system can be used subsea.
Wei He - Bosch
Wei He worked at Bosch Research and Technology Center-North America as an intern for battery management system (BMS) development. During his 6-month internship, he worked on the development and design of BMS software functions and advanced battery models in Matlab/Simulink, and the validation of BMS software functions via hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. Bosch is the leading automobile BMS production company in the world. By working as an intern in Bosch, Wei had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the development of commercial BMSs. Wei is currently a third-year PhD student working on the prognostics and health management of batteries.
Nick Willard - Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM, Korea)
Nick Williard worked at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) as a reliability engineer. He looked at ultra-capacitors, both on a materials level and a model level, to evaluate reliability and find opportunities to incorporate prognostics and health management (PHM) methodologies into the technology. His goal was familiar with the fabrication processes and the expected usage conditions in order to evaluate the technologies. expected life. Nick also looked for metrics that can be used to evaluate health in real time to improve condition-based maintenance strategies. This internship was collaborative and cross-cultural experience that created a partnership between CALCE and KIMM for future work.
Dinesh Mahadeo - Sandia Labs
Dinesh Mahadeo interned in summer at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During his 3-month internship, he worked on the reliability of prototype capacitors as part of the Hi-Rel Special Use Capacitors Group. His work focused on evaluating devices to ensure that they meet reliability and lifetime requirements. This testing and evaluation is in line with CALCE's Physics-of-Failure approach to reliability of electronics. Dinesh is currently a third-year graduate student working on the corrosion-related failure of electronic components and systems.
Yan Ning - Dell
Yan Ning worked on two electronics reliability projects in Dell Client Systems Reliability Engineering at Dell Inc. The first project is to develop data mining methods for heath and performance-related data captured in the field for computer systems. It is common for computer systems to encounter failures in an unexpected manner, and therefore, it is valuable for computer systems to have a prognostic capability to minimize the effects of unexpected system failure. This project will focus on data management, filtering, feature extraction, and prediction of computer failures. A second project focuses on the thermo-mechanical reliability of microvias in high density interconnect (HDI) boards, which is the topic of Yan.s PhD thesis research. This project investigates a specific manufacturing defect, voids generated from microvia plating process, on the reliability of microvias. The objective of this project is to identify the failure mechanism and failure sites of voided microvias under thermal cycling, determine the difference in lifetime (cycles to failure) between voided microvias and fully copper-filled microvias, and provide an HDI qualification approach based on the thermo-mechanical reliability of microvias.
Christopher Hendricks - Idaho National Laboratory
Chris Hendricks spent his summer at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Specifically, he worked at the Energy Storage Technologies Laboratory to study lithium-ion battery degradation under a variety of operating conditions. With the rapid expansion of electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles, advanced life characterization methods need to be developed for the long life expectations of vehicular applications under harsh environmental conditions. Chris had the opportunity to experience the benefits of working at a national laboratory, and he helped to establish a working collaboration between the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) and Idaho National Laboratories (INL).
Jordan Jameson - Los Alamos National Lab
Jordan spent this summer working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. His work focused on the development of a new paradigm in health monitoring - cooperative human-machine structural health monitoring. During his time there, Jordan was part of a group that aims to design, build, and test a vibrotactile haptic interface that will in some sense allow a human to feel the pain of a structure when it is damaged. This work added to CALCE's prognostics and health management initiative and strengthened the relationship between CALCE and the Department of Energy National Laboratories. Jordan returned in the fall to begin his second academic year in the PhD program at CALCE.
Lilliane Tessa - Neurelec, France
Lilliane interned at Neurelec in France working on cochlear implants. Cochlear implants are active implantable medical devices designed to electrically stimulate the auditory nerve in order to provide useful hearing sensations to patients affected with severe to profound deafness. Because cochlear implants operate inside the human body, manufacturers are required to demonstrate to regulatory authorities that the risks of potential device failures are largely balanced by the clinical benefits of their devices. However, qualification standards for medical implants do not provide a practical, consistent, and objective framework for predicting reliability. The goal of Lilliane's internship was to propose and validate a methodology for lifetime prediction of implant systems using bench data, in compliance with FDA regulations. Her roles included reviewing the qualification tests that are performed for design validation to ensure that they are compliant with FDA regulations, and designing accelerated life testing plans for lifetime predictions for implant subsystems.

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