Student Engineers Intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2004
CONTACT: Kathleen McPartland
Tel: 530-898-4263
Hede Ma, Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Tel: 818-354-0482
Student Engineers Intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Eight students from California State University, Chico’s College of Engineering, Computer Science and Technology started summer internships June 7 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). JPL is located at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Professor Hede Ma, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, worked last summer for JPL. He asked representatives to visit Chico and interview students for possible internships.
The JPL representatives came to Chico last March and were impressed with the students they interviewed. They hired eight of them on the spot for this summer. Seven of the students are in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: undergraduates Qing Wang, William Anderson, Greg Allen, Cindy Rich and James Skinner, and two graduates, Nick Taylor and Martin Dibert. Jamie Piacentine is a senior in the Department of Civil Engineering.
“Working for the Electronic Parts and Reliability groups, these students will have an interesting opportunity to experience NASA from the inside,” said Ma. Working in a laboratory setting, these interns will be testing parts that could be used in future space missions. These tests push state-of-the-art devices to their environmental extremes.
Students working in the Reliability Group will test their analytical skills by verifying and inspecting circuit and system designs used on current space missions. Already, the summer interns have been able to fit in visits to the Flight/Mission Control Center, a test of a mock Mars Rover, and the Von Karman museum (Theodore von Karman, Ph.D., was the director of the Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory).
JPL’s mission is to further NASA’s robotic exploration of space. Famous missions from JPL include Voyager, the two Mars Exploration Rovers and this summer’s Saturn encounter by the Cassini spacecraft. “This summer JPL will be buzzing with new updates from the MRE rovers and Cassini’s progress,” said Ma. “It is an exciting time for the students to intern there.”
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