Now that I am about to wrap up my internship with the California Mobility Center, I can genuinely say that I honestly have taken on a great amount of knowledge about the industry and my post grad career path. The first part of the internship was about learning about the engineering industry’s ties with automotive technologies and the environmentally conscious implementations for said technologies. The project that I had originally chosen to work on was centered around the production of an electric racing vehicle for the Formula SAE competition, which is an interdisciplinary design and engineering challenge for undergraduate and graduate university students.

At the time before I had to switch over to my new project, we were starting to look into the possible implementation and construction of piezoelectric hardware into a regenerative suspension system of the vehicle (specifically taking a closer look at the shock absorbers at this current time). Along with this, I was tasked to research the implementation and constraints of regenerative brakes in a racing application, the construction requirements of our vehicle, driver accommodations, vehicle and driver equipment, and the technical inspection process for the driver and our car in a racing application. I learned quite a bit about the automotive industry and that regenerative systems for electric vehicles is on a very positive upward trend. Only a small handful of companies have started the implementation process on their vehicles so our constructed vehicle would have definitely been the best of the best.

Unfortunately due to time constraints, the FSAE project had to sadly end. I was then moved onto a new project that was working towards the production of the Woodall Reactor. The Woodall Reactor is a carbon free energy hub that specializes in hydrogen production. It would enable maximum flexibility for servicing the electric grid and would produce hydrogen for transportation, as a cheaper and more efficient alternative to battery electricity storage in transportation.

We, the interns, were tasked with the goal of researching the markets for hydrogen and aluminum oxide (alumina). We split ourselves into teams so that we could cover more ground research-wise on each of the topics. I joined the team researching aluminum oxide (alumina) Over the course of the past few weeks I had learned about market trends for the alumina industry, buyers and sellers of the compound and what corporate regions they reside in, forecasted futures for the production of alumina, market demands, its environmental benefits and how our methods used for production will be better than our hypothetical competitors. This internship has been extremely insightful and I am very appreciative of the opportunity given to me.