Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences Summer Internship scheme 2024

Congratulations to all students who participated in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences Summer Internship scheme this year.

The internship scheme has been running for many years, having started in the School of Mechanical Engineering, it has now grown to become a cross-faculty event, with the Schools of Chemical and Process Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy and Earth and Environment taking part this year. 

There were 72 internship positions available, all are paid and open to undergraduate Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 (penultimate) year students, and last an average of 8 weeks, with the student working 30 hours per week on campus, alongside their academic supervisor/team. The student interns can choose their specialist subject area or another from across the faculty. The internships are a brilliant way for students to not only have a job for the summer, but be part of world-leading research, or work on a project supporting student education and student success. 

Throughout the internships, the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences Employability Team supports the cohort, this includes running an introductory session and two employability skill sessions, one of which showcased the Bragg Centre for Materials Research’s cutting-edge research facilities to give the students a taste of the academic research happening at the University. They also recruit volunteer Seminar Representatives from amongst the interns, the student representatives support the running of the peer-to-peer seminar series, whereby interns present their projects/work to each other and engage in discussion and academic supervisors are invited to join. This year there were 6 student-led seminars and 5 representatives. 

The 2024 internship scheme culminated with a celebration event on the 25th of September in the Sir William Henry Bragg Building, sponsored by the Bragg Centre for Materials Research (UoL) and the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials. The event championed the incredible work that student interns completed over the summer and gave others a chance to see posters representing a broad range of fascinating projects. 

The evening included a poster competition, that received 40 submissions, sponsored by the Henry Royce Institute. The judging panel consisted of Professor Ozz Querin, Pro-Dean for Student Education, Dr Timothy Moorsom, Dr Yi-Yeoun Kim, Dr Johanna Galloway, Dr Alice Macente and Dr Fanny Costa. The Best Poster went to Jonathan Calladine for his work on ‘Pascal - The Connect Four AI’, a project from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. Joint runners-up were: 

• Daniel Hopper, from the School of Chemical and Process Engineering, for his work on ‘Exploring the Capabilities of Secondary Electron Hyperspectral Imaging for the Analysis of Pharmaceutical Based Materials’ 

• Nelly Sadarova, from the School of Physics and Astronomy, for her work on ‘Particle Paparazzi: Snapping Secrets of Hydrogel Structures’ 

• Amanda Vel, from the School of Chemistry at the University of York, for her work on ‘Development of Visable Light Activated Probes for Protein Labelling’ 

• Aadam Goolab, from the School of Mechanical Engineering, for his work on ‘Cutting Edge Education, Discover the Power of CNC Machining’ 

Speaking at the event and presenter of the prizes, Professor Edmund Linfield, Director of the Bragg Centre for Materials Research said: ‘As Director of the Bragg Centre and a Research Area Lead for the Royce Institute, I know there is currently a real demand from industry for recruiting and developing the skilled workforce of our future.  It was therefore fantastic to see the quality and breadth of interdisciplinary projects presented at the Showcase, with everyone speaking so enthusiastically about their work. I look forward to seeing the participants becoming our future leaders – from academia and education through to industry and government’. 

Jonathan Calladine, a final year student studying Electronic and Electrical Engineering MEng, BEng, and prize winner, described his experience. “I applied for a summer internship called “Help a Robot Connect the Dots” which aimed to develop a system where a user plays a game of Connect Four against a robot. The purpose of this project was to make an interesting and eye-catching project to be used for open days in the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. The project aimed to encompass many aspects of the courses offered by the school and to be an exciting project that will captivate prospective students and make them incentivise them to come and study Electronics at the University.” 

Jonathan applied to a few internships which were all something adjacent to his course as he wanted to try something new. “I applied for robotics and mechatronics internships to gain experience in a field which I had not studied in my course. The main reason I chose this specific project was because it sounded like a really fun project, and I really wanted the opportunity to be the person to make it. To secure my internship, I had a preliminary meeting with the supervisor where we discussed the project and what I could do to help my application. As I had not studied robotics before, I was disadvantaged compared to other students who had studied these topics in their courses. Furthermore, I knew other students had more experience using the relevant image processing software which would be pivotal for the completion of this project. Therefore, to enhance my application, I tried to learn this software and solved a simplified version of the problem. Even though I was the least experienced applicant, I managed to secure this internship because I had demonstrated a solution to part of the project as well as my ability to learn the technical software and how hard I was willing to work.” 

The internship, he said, was broken into three main aspects: the computer vision to observe the state of the physical game and update the computer with the game state; the solving algorithm to compute the next best move to respond to a user’s move and the robotic arm to perform the next move determined by the algorithm.  

Jonathan described a memorable moment from the internship as playing his first game against the full system. “It had taken seven weeks, filled with highs and lows, to get to a point where I could play a physical game against the computer. This was incredibly rewarding and a very satisfying moment. There had been some weeks where I was stuck on a single frustrating problem and felt like I was getting nowhere, so it was incredibly satisfying to have a tangible and functional product.” 

Looking back on the experience he said “I would highly recommend doing an internship. I have gained so much unique and useful experience which I could not have gained just by doing my degree. Internships look great on a CV, and I am hoping it will aid me in getting a job in an increasingly competitive job market. Finally, I would recommend doing an EPS internship as it was a very enjoyable thing to do with my summer. There was a lovely community of interns working on similar projects and I had a great time socialising with them and hearing about their projects.”