The Hackathon:
On February 21st-23rd, the University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Science Center hosted the second annual Health Hackathon. This event is an opportunity for a diverse set of inventors to come together and use their skills to develop innovative solutions to problems in the healthcare sector.

We are all Chemical Engineering students at UNM; Tina is a freshman in the program and Christina and Emily are both juniors. We decided to sign up for this event because we wanted to use our engineering skills to develop real solutions to important problems.

The first night of the Hackathon was spent choosing teams. We chose to join Tye Martin’s team; Tye is a post-doc student in the Biomedical Engineering department who wanted to develop a solution to the problems wheelchair users face when it comes to elevator access. By the end of the night our team consisted of eight members; three undergraduate chemical engineering students (us), two undergraduate computer science students, one post-doc (Tye), one post-bacc linguistics student, one UNM HSC staff member, and one UNM professor.
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The next day we worked from 7:30 AM to 9:30 PM to conduct market research, develop branding, and rapidly prototype our solutions. This included surveying wheel-chair users, interviewing firefighters, coding apps, 3-D printing, and manipulating unconventional materials. See the photos below!

The final day was spent making final adjustments and then pitching our ideas! It was great to listen to the other team’s pitches. Ultimately, our team did not win the Hackathon, though we are proud of the solution we pitched. For more information, check out the local news coverage of the event (www.koat.com/article/health-hackathon-winning-teams-earn-grant-money/31123878).

Reflections:
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Tina: I have never done something like that before. The health Hackathon was relaxed but so intense. There was so much food, like a 24 hour buffet. There were materials and 3D printers everywhere. I think my favorite part was meeting people. I was probably the youngest of my group and it was so cool to meet people who were older and more experienced than me. I originally thought that there would only be students doing this but there were professors, health professionals, and more. It takes bravery to first go up there and pitch your idea, and trying to choose a team to go on was hard because everyone’s ideas were so good. The staff who made this possible was also so kind and so pumped to work with you. I enjoyed working with my team and being able to become their friends. It was amazing to see the amount of dedication people had to what they were doing. To my teammates who made the app and robot in 24 hours, wow! I am so happy I decided to be part of the health Hackathon because it made me push myself so see how I can help. I am also glad to have met everyone.

Christina: The health hackathon was such an amazing and rewarding experience. Going into this event, I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Everybody was super friendly and welcoming. Once we were in our teams, we got to work. I got to exercise my experience with design thinking. It was really awesome getting to see an idea become a prototype of a product in just one weekend. I may be a little biased, but our group was so amazing. Despite everybody’s different backgrounds, we worked together very well and were able to produce an amazing design. Through the health hackathon, I got to meet great people, see what a pitch competition was like and put my knowledge of engineering thus far to good use. We all had such a fun weekend and I look forward to next year’s health hackathon!

Emily: My favorite thing about this event was getting to use my skills to make a difference. Most of my experience in Chemical Engineering is research based, and it is generally hard to see the direct impact you are making when you are running experiments in a lab. At the hackathon I was introduced to rapid prototyping and design thinking. I also learned so much about how to conduct market research and how to use this to inform the iterations of your prototype.
Overall, I would 10/10 recommend participating in a hackathon. You learn new skills, meet new people, and gain a new perspective on your purpose as an engineer/coder/creator/etc.

We hope this inspired you to participate in a hackathon!
– Tina, Christina, and Emily

A few weekends ago I had the opportunity to be a group leader for the annual Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Art of Science event. It was the third year of putting on the event that started right here at UNM and it was better than ever!

​Girl Scout Collaboration

SWE hosts the outreach event with the Girl Scouts of New Mexico trails. SWE, School of Engineering and other engineering student organization volunteers help with event set-up, take-down, running interactive, STEM activities for the girls. It is the second largest STEM event for the Girl Scouts of New Mexico trails, with around 80 attendees.

Engineering Activities

This year Hispanic Engineering and Science Organization (HESO) and American Nuclear Society (ANS) helped SWE in putting on activities for the girls. SWE implemented an outreach activity that some of us participated in at the national conference in Anaheim last year. The outreach chairs assembled escape room backpacks that used a skill from each engineering discipline to solve the problem: delivering a cure to the public after a zombie apocalypse. This was not only an activity our members enjoyed at the conference but one of the girl scouts’ favorite activities.

​HESO taught the girls about electronics through play dough circuits and LED robots while ANS had many stations where the girls learned about alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. When the girls weren’t working with a student org, they were either decorating their own lab coats or talking to local professionals during speed mentoring.

Volunteers and Sponsors

SWE was lucky enough to have sponsors like Sandia National Laboratories, Honeywell, and Bohannan Huston that helped provide supplies for the activities and lunch for the girls. The event took a whole Saturday with some volunteers working up to ten hours to really make this whole thing happen.

My Role

While I stayed for the whole event, I had a pretty cool job. I lead the girls to and from activities. I had about 27 girls in my group with 3 parent volunteers. I got to know the girl scouts and even got to participate in some of the activities. To prepare for the role I had to get registered as a Girl Scout volunteer and get a background check. I really enjoyed helping out and being a part of one of the largest events SWE UNM puts on.

– Anna

The weekend after the second week of school I boarded a plane to San Diego for the WE Local 2020 Society of Women Engineers Conference. I will not lie; it was challenging to pick up and leave for three days when I was barely into the semester, but it turned out to be so much fun and even a little relaxing.

Plane Ride

Some of the best parts of the flight were that the flight was not delayed, Sunport TSA barely had a line, and after watching the sunset out the gate window listening to my Physics III lecture on the wave equation, I boarded a direct flight from ABQ to San Diego. We shared a flight with the UNM swim team who was heading to Reno, Nevada.

Airbnb

There were seven other girls that got to go to the conference too. We stepped off the plane, got into an Uber, and headed to our Airbnb. The instructions for the place, though, were sent to the wrong place so we spent a good hour trying to figure out how to open the place. (It felt like a “How many engineers does it take to open a door?” situation.) Once we got in, we set up the beds and got ready for the conference the next day.

Conference Day 1

We woke up early Friday morning to walk about twenty minutes to the conference center to register and listen to the keynote speaker while eating a very nice continental breakfast. The keynote was Bhavya Mehta. She is a product development engineer at BD and was just a few years older than us. It was cool learning from her because she was in our spot, an undergraduate student studying to be an engineer, not too long ago.

We all headed to the graduate poster competition which was fun to listen to. The talks were no longer than 10 minutes and most were on thesis topics. I headed to a resume workshop with General Atomics and scored great feedback and a perfect grocery bag. I took a homework break and met back up with the other SWE members to listen to lightning talks. One of my favorites was about doing yoga in the workplace.

We ate lunch and listened to the State of the SWE speech. The rest of the day was spent listening to other breakout sessions. One of the standout sessions for me was a panel on moving whether it be for school or work. We headed back to Airbnb after the talks. On the way back, we passed right next to the Padres’ stadium and a cute matcha place. Friday night was also our club dinner night and we all headed to a really delicious Greek place.

Conference Day 2

Day two went about the same as day one. We started the day with a really good breakfast again. The activity for the morning was a networking hour where we got to know a nanotechnology engineer. We went to listen to talks on data mining, leadership and LinkedIn, which all were super eye opening. Lunch was provided during the keynote Q&A session. For this keynote they asked a high school student and her mother to talk about how they have founded a SWE club and participated in a SWE Next competition in their local community. After lunch, we took a short beach front walk and took advantage of the beautiful weather in San Diego. We kept attending talks until 5:00 pm. We headed back to Airbnb, went to this super good California burrito place, and got ready for the flight back to ABQ.

Takeaways

I would say this was one of my favorite conferences I have gone to. It was much smaller than the national conference, but I still got to listen to great talks and participate in a career fair. It was much easier to catch speakers walking around and talk to them and make more connections. The food provided at the conference center was so good which doesn’t seem like a huge factor, but the meals totally kept me on site (since I normally go out to grab a bite) to listen to more talks and saved me a lot of money. I liked that we only took eight members and we all got to know each other super well by attending talks and going out to dinner all together.

​Even though I missed school, it was nice to go somewhere that wasn’t ABQ and meet awesome professionals. I learned way more than I thought and I came back way more motivated than I thought.

I hope you all have found a little motivation as were still in the early weeks of the semester!

Check out a vlog of this experience here: http://thepack.unm.edu/anna-j/swe-we-local-conference-san-diego/#.XlAsRGhKhPY
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-Anna

 Inspired. If I had to choose one word to describe my experience at WE19, that would be it. My experience at WE19 in Anaheim, CA was very impactful and I came out of it with a new mindset on my studies and identity. Being surrounded by female engineers from UNM and from around the nation really made me feel like I was part of something bigger: the movement to bring more women into engineering.

This is my first year in SWE and my first conference, so I came in with very few expectations and a drive to participate in everything I possibly could. When I first arrived at WE19, I was very intimidated. Everybody around me was dressed professionally and looked like very, very smart people. At first I didn’t feel like I fit in, but as the conference went on, I realized that there were many people who, like me, were at their very first conference and others had felt the same way during their first conference. I gained more confidence talking to people, and it helped me attend workshops and presentations without any hesitation. Once I found out that there were people like me at WE19, I felt more like the people I saw as well and it created a very inclusive and supportive environment for engineers to explore possibilities in their field.
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The workshops and presentations offered at the conference covered a wide variety of topics, from mansplaining, the effects of saying “sorry” too often, making your phone into a fitness tracker, to engineering your wardrobe for success. They were targeted towards female engineers and all STEM professionals as well. Each talk I attended was engaging and fun. I took something away from each presentation to keep in mind for the future. These talks made me think, “Wow, that’s interesting! I need to make a note of that for later”, “I’ll need to do that for my next job search,” and “I believe I can get to where that person is too.” The presentations and speakers supported engineers at all levels and I feel everyone was influenced in one way or another.

Another wonderful experience of WE19 was rooming with other engineers. Most of my usual friends aren’t engineers, so it was a change hanging out with students in similar areas of study. They were funny, kind, enthusiastic, and extremely supportive. My WE19 experience would not have been as much fun without them. Knowing that these young women are studying at the same university as I am made me proud to be part of the UNM School of Engineering and motivated me to succeed in tough courses. They helped me see that I can study difficult subjects and still thrive. Thank you, Angela, Kayli, Mary, and Katherine, for showing me how amazing intelligent engineers can be.

Recently I had been feeling more and more doubt about whether I am smart enough to even continue majoring in Computer Science (Imposter Syndrome, anyone?). But the women I heard and saw at WE19 motivated me to continue pushing through. I want to pursue my degree not only to be one of the women who enter into that field but also to inspire others to do the same. The conference made me realize how much of an impact female engineers, including myself, can have on society and
on other people.

It was a great honor to attend WE19 and I hope to be able to attend WE20 next year. I witnessed many present and future successful engineers that inspired me to study hard and reach for my dreams. I hope everyone else who attended came out a new person as well, as engineers who live, learn, and lead.
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Mari A.

I am a junior at UNM studying computer science. I went to the SWE conference. I had an interview with Boeing. Here is how it went. (this is definitely not presented verbatim, lol)

At the MASSIVE career fair, I went to the Boeing booth and started talking to a recruiter. I handed him my resume, while not-so-subtly flexing the fact that I have a sEcUrItY cLeArAnCe. The recruiter then says to me “Alrighty then, you want an interview? Come to the third floor ballroom tonight at 8pm and we’ll see if you’re a good fit.” Heck freakin’ yeah I will.

I show up at 8pm to the third floor, and there is a SUPER long line. I thought, “there’s no way that ALL these people have interviews right?” I start to understand that this was just a screening process to see who will ACTUALLY get an interview. Everyone is handed two tickets, and they can use those two tickets to talk to two different tables inside the ballroom. We are handed  packet that describes the teams at each table. I scan the packet for software engineering internship positions, and have it settled: I will talk to tables 28 and 29.

When I eventually got into the ballroom, I go right up to table 29. I hand the manager at that table my resume, and he starts going over it.

Manager: “HmmMMmm, I see you have some experience at Sandia National Laboratories. ”

Me: “Yeah, I’ve been there for two summers now!”

Manager: “Okay tell me about some of your work there.”

I explain to him some of the work I did, and answered some more generic interview questions.

Manager: “Well, you’ve got a nice resume here, but I don’t think you’ll be a good fit. We’re looking for data systems engineers. You just don’t have the experience.”

At this point, I am definitely upset. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT I DON’T WANT TO SWITCH UP THE WORK I DO AND TRY SOMETHING NEW!?!? JUST BECAUSE I DID ALL THESE THINGS ON MY RESUME IN THE PAST, DOESN’T MEAN I WANT TO DO THOSE THINGS FOREVER!!!!!! I CAN LEARN TO BE A DATA SYSTEMS ENGINEER OR WHATEVERRRR

Anyways… I move on and go to table 28. These two nice ladies take my resume, and ask me some unapologetically generic questions.

Recruiter: “Describe a challenge you had in the past, and how did you overcome it?”

Me: “Well, I-” blah blah blah

A few more rounds of these questions occur. Finally,

Recruiter: “Well, I don’t think we’re a good fit. You just don’t have enough experience with the type of work we do”

WHAT THE HECK?!!?!?!?! I’M FREAKING APPLYING TO BE AN INTERN. OF COURSE I DON’T ALREADY HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH WHAT Y’ALL DO.

Me: “Ok, well thank you for your time.”

Recruiter: “May we take your ticket?”

I had completely forgotten about the ticket system. I hand the ladies a ticket, and I go off on my way. I still have one other ticket to spend, since the first table forgot to collect one from me, so I find yet another software engineering table. I want to take this moment to apologize to the Boeing lords for breaking their little hiring rules.

The next table I talk to are very polite, but they admit that none of them are computer science. They say that they COULD take my resume and give it to the computer science person who WAS supposed to be there, but my chances might not be great like that. They tell me I should spend my ticket on a different table.

So I find my FOURTH software engineering table, and queue up behind someone who is already speaking to these people. This poor person is getting DESTROYED by the manager. All I can see is that the manager is writing some problem with integrals on a piece of paper and the person isn’t able to answer it. They tell him he’s not a good fit, and he starts asking questions for how he can improve himself. He eventually leaves.

At last, I got up to the table, hand the manager my resume, and… things go fine at first. Th manager asks me about some of my work at Sandia, and I give him a high level overview of it. I tell him about a project I did where I implemented some sensors on a Raspberry Pi. And then, things take a turn.

Manager: “Diagram out the program you wrote for the sensors on the Raspberry Pi,” the manager said, as he flips my resume over to the back and hands me a pen.

Me: “Uhhhh, okay, so here we had this sensor that was detecting radia-”

Manager: “No. I don’t care about what the sensor was detecting, diagram out all the threads and processes in the program you wrote.”

Me: “Okay, so uhh we have this, um, main thread which would call this thread, and we’d also have um a different thread that is”

Manager: “There’s another thread!? Then why didn’t you diagram that one out as well?!?!”

I stumble my way through the diagram. He continues to interrogate me on all the details.

He eventually has heard enough of this story and switches gears. He takes my resume, and starts writing C code. Not just pseudocode, like actual C code that would compile if you typed it character for character into a compiler.

Manager: “Tell me what’s wrong with this code.”

I answer this fairly obvious problem, but he starts hammering me on the details.

Manager: “Okay, so we are continuously allocating memory, but what happens when we eventually run out of memory?”

Me: “Uhhhhh, the program crashes?!”

Manager: “And how do you fix it?!”

Me: “Uhhhh, free the memory?!?!”

This goes on for a while as he switches to more coding problems. I don’t think I have said uhh and umm this many times in my life. I understood and had solutions for all of his problems, but the way he was pressuring me felt like I was being forced to cure cancer at gunpoint.

Eventually, the manager sets the pen down and looks at his hiring buddy. They nod at each other, and he says to me:

“Alright. When do you have time to interview tomorrow?”

I felt a massive wave of relief. I had wasted an hour and 45 minutes here in this ballroom by now. This event closes in 15 minutes along with all the other fun events in the convention center that I was missing out on. But I finally landed an interview. In the words of 21 Savage at Camp Flog Gnaw (later that weekend): “my throat dry.”

The next day, I showed up to the Boeing interview booth. I’m called into a room, and the same manager from yesterday sits me down, and says, “Do you know what a structured interview is?”

Me: “Uhhh, I guess, I mean isn’t that just an interview?”

Manager: “Yes, I will ask you 4 to 5 questions, you will respond to them, and I will take notes on your response.”

Me: “Okay yeah, so it’s just an interview?!”

Anyways, the questions start coming and they are pretty generic. A few questions go by, and eventually he asks, “Describe a time where you faced a problem, and had to go to someone more knowledgeable for help.”

I rack my brain really quick, and offer a decent story:

“I once had to install linux packages onto a Raspberry Pi at work without being able to connect the pi to the internet. I was still just getting familiar with linux so I struggled a bit. There was this one package that I couldn’t get to install on the pi. I then went to a mentor, and realized that my mistake was that I was building the linux package on my windows machine , and then moving it onto the pi.”

I thought it was a pretty good story, but I didn’t realize the one logical fallacy I stated. You can’t build linux packages on windows machines. The interviewer immediately pounces on that.

“You built a linux package on a windows machine? What are you talking about? That is not possible. Do you understand how linux packages work? Do you know what the difference is between a .dll and .so file?”

He proceeds to explain the differences between .dll and .so files. I reiterate to him that I was (and still am) pretty new to all this linux stuff, and that I wasn’t lying (AND I WASN’T). So he asks me once again: “HOW DID YOU BUILD A LINUX PACKAGE ON A WINDOWS MACHINE”

Me: “I… I um… I used Cygwin…”

The interviewer pauses for a few seconds.

“Oh… Okay. That makes sense. Okay, carry on.”

WHEW. I won’t get bogged down in the details, but basically, Cygwin is a tool that makes the process I described possible to do. At that point, I was no longer under arrest and I was in good standing with the computer science laws. I feel a wave of relief and continue on with my story.

The rest of the interview went just fine. I asked a decent amount of questions at the end to show my interest. When we were ending, the manager then made some pretty suggestive comments.

Manager: “Soooo, will you be around over the weekend?”

Me: “Uh, yes, I will be here until Sunday night.”

Manager: “Okay, just ummm, be sure to check your email and phone.”

Me: “HhmmmmMMMMmmm okay okay, I hear you my guy. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ”

Aaaaannnnnnnnnd so that is how my interview went. Later that night as I was getting out of an Uber, I received an email from Boeing. It was like “congrats u got de job!” and told me to go to a congratulatory brunch in a ballroom the next day. The brunch was pretty nice but it definitely took out a chunk of my Disneyland time (smh). There, I saw the first manager who rejected me and it felt empowering to give him that glare that was like “See, b***h, I’m worthy.”

As of now, I don’t know if I will take this Boeing offer, but I’m leaning towards it. All I know is that it’s in Fairfax, VA, which is 30 minutes away from Washington D.C.

There are plenty of other interesting events that happened to me at this SWE trip, but I felt like this is the one most worth sharing. Some other notable things that happened was having 4 other interviews (Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin), going to Disneyland, and going to Camp Flog Gnaw. This trip was an absolute blast, and I would definitely recommend getting in on this conference next year if you have the chance.

So, the moral of the story is: breaking a FEW rules is fine on your job hunt, and never fold when an interviewer is drilling you.
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Completely unrelated photo (from Camp Flog Gnaw):

I had the awesome opportunity to travel to Anaheim, California for the 2019 Society of Women Engineers (SWE) national conference: WE 19. The theme this year was “We Live, We Learn, We Lead” and I can say with confidence that I did all three.

​This is my second year as a member of UNM’s chapter of SWE. I was lucky enough to attend WE 18, last year’s national conference, and because of that, I had some expectations going into it. My main priority was to listen to the keynote speakers. At WE 18, I wasn’t able to see the Thursday speaker. This year, my friends and I made sure we got there super early to not only get to listen to the speakers but get a great seat!

My Thursday started off with a plate full of pastries, a cup full of more cream than coffee, and so much excitement for my first talk of the weekend. Carol Malnati, Vice President CRHF R&D at Medtronic, was the opening keynote speaker for the conference. I was completely captured by her first story.

​She explained a turning point in her career. She was a mother working towards her Ph.D. when her professor gave her a lower overall grade than her male classmate. She explained how she confronted the professor, asked some of the most difficult questions while remaining calm and fought for the grade she deserved. Even then, she fully admitted how discouraged and defeated she felt but, in that defining moment, she decided to power on for her daughter.

Throughout the speech she gave great advice like following your inner compass, being resilient and finding your own moxie. After her standing ovation, I wandered over to where the UNM chapter took our group photo. It was then when I finally realized how many students our organization took. I was so proud we took 39 students and I really wish I had more time to get to know everyone who came.

​The rest of the day I bounced between the career fair and tech talks. It was different going to a career fair when I already have a job that I love. I talked to some companies and got awesome company swag, but having a job took a lot of pressure off the 30-second elevator speech I practiced about a thousand times last year. SWE’s career fair is one of the largest for women engineers. I got to learn so much about companies I never knew before and got some resume tips. Other members were lucky enough to be asked to interview and offered jobs or internships.

The second day, Rachel Hutter, Senior Vice President for International Facilities Operations Services and Worldwide Safety, Health and Engineering at Disney, empowered the crowd using the strong female characters from Star Wars to celebrate a new theme park’s opening: Galaxy’s Edge lands. Not only were there snippets from Disney’s Star Wars movies and TV shows but each piece of advice had a brilliant story accompanying it that kept me engaged the entire talk.
I revisited the career fair and went to some more tech talks. Some of the speeches where super funny like “How Netflix is ruining your Career” or exceptionally empowering like the plenary panel, “#SHECANDOIT.” The second day of the conference was my time to work the SWE boutique. This is one of UNM SWE’s best fundraisers. It was fun to volunteer for the club and look at how cool our stuff was. I fell in love with the SWE crew necks that sold out at the conference. The club is now special ordering it for our members (thank goodness)!

​By the end of the weekend I was super tired and so behind on homework, but I had a really amazing time living, learning and leading. I wasn’t at the conference the whole time either. I got to go to Downtown Disney, went out with the organization for out group dinner, and took a trip to San Diego. The conference was a perfect pick me up right before finals and re-inspired me to pursue engineering.

I hope you all are able to find new inspiration in your dream career field to help finals feel a little less awful.

Anna

Karen’s Summer 2019

​To start off, I placed both my kids in summer camp while I spent the summer taking Calculus 3 and Differential Equations. I took my maths at CNM because, let’s face it, I would rather pay cash for my classes instead of using student loans. I know that student loans will bite me in the a**, later on down the road, but I am still hopeful that there is a way out.

Even though I had both the kids in summer camp (basically, out of my hair for 8 hours a day), I feel like taking Calculus 3 and Differential Equations during the summer, AT THE SAME TIME, was a big mistake. The classes were hard enough, but that was not really my problem. I just wish that I had focused on each one, individually, so that I could fully understand the subjects. I received a C in both classes. Nothing that I am proud of but, also nothing that I am ashamed of either. My only advise, is that if you need to take them during the summer, do NOT take them together. Calculus 3 wasn’t nearly as hard as Calculus 2 (a class that I received a B in), however it had sooooooooo much information, and sooooooo much homework. And I get it, we need the homework, it helps you understand the information. It just took so much of my time, that it was hard to concentrate on my family life while doing well in class.

During my first exams, my grandmother passed away. She was someone who lived with me for over 30 years. This hit me kinda…weird. Mostly because I have been fortunate to spend these 37 years of my life completely “death of loved ones” free. So I was feeling pretty lost, trying to be a good mother and student, and acting like everything was normal. You receive condolences from other people, but you don’t know if they REALLY understand. Hell, you don’t know if YOU really understand. There was even a point, about 2 weeks later, that I had a total meltdown which resulted in a lot of yelling and almost breaking things, on my part. However, that meltdown seemed to be my acceptance in my DABDA of grieving. Ok, DABDA stands for Denial Anger Bargaining Depression and Acceptance, for those of you who do not know the stages of grieving. Luckily, my father just happened to be visiting me during this time and he helped me TREMENDOUSLY to get through it all.
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I did eventually manage to do some summer things with the kids where we went to Santa Rosa with some old time friends, where I became well acquainted with relaxation and party time (in moderation since the kids were around).

This summer was one of the most impactful one for me since I began my college career. I was fortunate enough to land an internship at WE18 last year that allowed me to work with Northrop Grumman for 10 weeks this summer. I worked from one of their locations in Buffalo, NY with their software team. The internship was my first, so I was extremely excited to experience everything Northrop Grumman had to offer. I worked on various projects throughout the 10 weeks that allowed me to work with over 100,000 lines of code! I was really excited to actually apply what I learned in school on real products and projects. My team was really good to me, allowing me to work on tasks that actually mattered and make changes that would be put into recent releases. I felt like an integral part of the team, working with other engineers to create new solutions for the clients. The internship really allowed me to understand the work environment and culture I would be entering once I left school. At the conclusion of my internship, Northrop Grumman asked me to stay with them throughout the year and work remotely. Plus, the company has extended an offer to me to work full-time after graduation. I think this opportunity couldn’t have come at a better time, and I am super grateful to SWE for making it happen.

Additionally, being in New York allowed me to travel in the area a lot. Buffalo is 30 minutes from the Niagara Falls, so I was able to see one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World while I was there. Also, the city is 2 hours from Toronto, Canada, which made it easy for me to visit Toronto with my friends who came to see me. Lastly, of course I could not miss going to NYC if I was in New York. At the end of my time in NY, I stayed in NYC for a week and visit all of the places that I grew up in with other friends who came to visit. Overall, this summer has been super fun and exciting. I look forward to seeing what other opportunities I can find at WE19 this year!
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Jessica

9/11 Memorial

This summer, I had the opportunity to go to Germany to work in a research lab, with funding from the DAAD RISE Germany program (https://www.daad.de/rise/en/rise-germany/).

One day after my last final, I flew to Germany. It was pretty rough going from thermo, to moving out of my apartment in Albuquerque, driving to Cruces, then to Germany, but it was all worth it.

Cologne Cathedral

First, I lived two weeks with a host family in Cologne learning the German language with other interns, which was so much fun. I remember stepping out of the central station, seeing the Cologne Cathedral for the very first time, and just being so amazed by its grandeur. I would see it almost every day as I went out with my friends, took walks by the river, and explored the area on my own.

Me, my flatmate (another intern), and my host family at breakfast

After my two weeks in Cologne, I moved to my internship location of Bochum, which is a smaller city in Germany near the Netherlands. I worked in Kristina Tschulik’s group at the ZEMOS lab in Ruhr Universität and researched the topic of the electrochemistry of individual metallic nanoparticles. I conducted electrochemical experiments, analyzed the data I collected, prepared presentations- the normal lab stuff.

I was fortunate to work in a very diverse lab group, and had a wonderful female PI and female supervisor. I had a lot of opportunities to get to know them- every Monday we had group seminars where two people would update everyone on their project, every day we would all eat lunch together where I would get to socialize and learn about the other cultures, and we regularly had socials after work where we would drink and play Smash Ultimate. My lab group comprised of 20 total people, and I was literally the only undergrad amongst the sea of brilliant German and international PhD’s.

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Check ’em out: https://nanoec.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/en/

<– Me chillin with my double Faraday cage three-electrode microelectrode set up

​Aside from work, I traveled every single weekend. In total, I visited 10 different countries in addition to 14 cities around Germany. I even got to meet up with Isabella in Bavaria! It was a good reminder that the world is still a beautiful and diverse place. However, I was extremely exhausted at the end of the summer from the constant work and travel cycle, so more than anything in the world, I looked forward to just sleeping in.

Overall, I had a wonderful cultural and academic adventure this summer, and if there’s one important thing I got out of it, it’s that there is still so much that I don’t know. It was such a humbling experience to be around all these PhD’s and hear all these high-level scientific discussions that I could barely understand, so I feel motivated to make the most out of this school year!
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Interested in how I got to Germany and how you could too? Email me at roselee3@unm.edu

I spent my summer listening to “California Gurls” by Katy Perry on repeat. Why, you may ask? Because I found myself in a very fortunate situation – one where I got to spend my summer in Los Angeles, California, working at a UCLA inorganic chemistry laboratory (and also playing lots and lots of beach volleyball).

I am a Junior in chemical engineering. Chemical engineers and chemists, it turns out, are actually very different. So, working in a basic chemistry lab, I gained an entirely new set of skills. I learned about reaction mechanisms, nuclear magnetic spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and how to use Chem-Draw. I found it to be fascinating!

I worked with the Spokoyny research group, which strives toward “establishing new synthetic avenues, structural understanding, and applications for inorganic and organomimetic clusters and assemblies” (https://www.organomimetic.com/). Specifically, I worked on functionalizing polyhedral boranes. Working around such talented chemists inspired me to take more chemistry electives in my undergrad; there is so much about chemistry that I do not know!

Besides developing a knowledge of chemistry, I learned two important things this summer. First, I improved greatly at lab work by accepting that I will fail and that I will learn from it. It was really hard for me to adjust to the lab environment, at first; there was so much to track with the reactions and their work-ups, and getting it all right on the first try was impossible. Ultimately, I learned that that there are inevitable degrees of uncertainty when it comes to lab work, and that failure is not always bad. Second, I developed a better understanding of what it would be like to work in academia. I got to talk with graduate students, post-docs, and professors about their experiences. I found a path in academia to be more appealing than expected, and the conversations I had this summer will be very helpful as I decide in the coming year whether or not I want to apply to graduate school.
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Overall, I had an awesome summer in LA! Besides working, I was also able to go sight-seeing with my boyfriend (pictured below, at LACMA), play lots of beach volleyball, and take a bus up to Sacramento to visit my extended family’s vineyard!

If you want to hear more about anything I mentioned here –  about how you can find an internship in Academia, about what it was like to work in a synthetic chemistry lab vs a chemical engineering lab, etc., please reach out! My email is ganleye@unm.edu.