Summer Placement: Caterva

Sarunas Nejus has been working at Caterva GmbH  in Germany this summer as an Energy Storage Systems Hardware Engineer. He tells us what he's been up to.

"I am responsible for the hardware of solar energy storage systems, which, apart from the conventional features they have (energy for household users etc.), being connected to a swam, provide/sink charge to/from the grid in Europe when it is needed (for instance, sudden shut off of a power plant). That is called frequency stabilisation and our systems do it in quite a novel way, thus it’s very exciting to work here. One of the things that attracted me here was that the company is a start-up (you know how things are going in start-ups, don’t you?).

"I’m working on a whole lot of various tasks, which do not only include my subject – that makes things even more interesting. The company’s culture is great – as that is a start-up, every door is open and everyone’s ready to help. I’ve actually been enjoying the first month here very much – troubleshooting different hardware problems, designing improvement circuitries for the device and even visiting our customers all across Bavaria for maintenance cases. Although I’ve been here for a very small amount of time, I was swept to the team’s culture so quickly that I feel like I’m senior here already. The communication between the team members is outstanding, including daily huddle sessions and I also have my role defined clearly, I know where the company is moving, its visions and what sort of impact I can make.

"I must mention that the company’s CTO, who is our main manager, is actually the best leadership example I have ever seen in reality. This guy leads by example, even though he always has a great workload to do himself, he is always ready to help anyone with any struggle. All of the company aims are made clear, everyone’s updated about everything that everyone’s been at during daily huddles (what I’ve been at, what I plan to do and what I’m struggling with), and now, experiencing it myself, I can say that this sort of communication is effective and motivating as never. One can notice that assertive communication between each other, a right mixture of work effectiveness and people satisfaction brings unbelievable results considering that the team is so small.

"By the end of the placement (13 months overall) I want to expand my knowledge not just in renewable energy systems hardware but also in its business side, to be aware of what Europe needs and what problems are occurring. The first month looked very promising and I have no doubts that subsequent time here in Caterva will be no less exciting than it’s now."

Summer Placement: ARM

Eddie is studying Electrical and Electronic Engineering. His summer placement was with ARM working within the Systems and Software Group.

Studying Electronic Engineering, I’d heard a lot about ARM, a semiconductor and software design company, designing the IP which goes into 95% of smartphones, 80% of digital cameras, and 35% of all electronic devices. Recently described in an article as an “invisible brand”, given that most consumers of these products may not have ever heard of the company, my summer internship was always going to be a bit of a voyage of discovery!

At the time of writing, I’ve only got a few weeks left of the summer placement and have been very fortunate to have been given access to some amazing resources and guidance from industry leading engineers. The experience I have gained from the various projects I’ve been working on in my role within the Systems and Software Group has been invaluable, giving me the opportunity to learn various new programming languages and top of the range industrial software with a market leader in their industry.

My role has consisted of improving and automating various sections of the verification process, saving my colleagues time and effort on jobs which would usually have been done manually. The task of automating these processes has given me an understanding of the processes themselves, how they could be improved, and the various steps involved in improving them, giving me excellent opportunities to use my own problem solving skills. Being shown the improved accuracy of results of a regression analysis the week after making changes to a script provided me with great evidence that I was helping to make a positive difference within my team, after what felt like a fairly overwhelming start to the summer.

I recently received some valuable advice about automating; always try and replace yourself with a script, there’s always more important things you can spend your time working on! This advice holds true to how I have perceived ARM’s philosophies; there is a strong emphasis on improvement and personal development. There have been a variety of ‘Lunch and Learns’ in which guest speakers talk about their field and the future of technology; the ‘Lunch’ occasionally leaves a little to be desired, but the ‘Learns’ tend to be inspiring enough to make up for that. As interns we were also given the opportunity to work in small teams on the ‘ARM Inten Innovation Challenge’, similar to the Global Engineering Challenge, we were tasked with coming up with a wearable device to improve life in a refugee camp, which was a great opportunity to use skills I’d developed with SELA.

All in all, industry has also taught me many lessons that university life has not necessarily been able to: communication on a variety of different levels is integral to the success of a project; solutions to problems may not always be simple or even possible, as such trial and error and making mistakes are good steps along the way to producing a high quality and sophisticated solution; personal development and opportunities for education do not have to stop after university; and finally, 10PM is a perfectly reasonable bedtime when working a full time job!

Summer Placement: Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield

Jordan Rickard has been working with the department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University  on a research project about new processing techniques to improve the performance of high efficiency NiFe batteries. He tells us what he's been up to:

So far I have been using a new processing technique to manufacture iron electrodes for use in Nickle-Iron batteries. I start the day by preparing the chemicals needed to coat the iron electrode, then using a press that operates at 120°c and 10 tonnes of pressure I fix the mixture to some nickel plates. These can then be placed in a solution with another electrode and connected to a machine that charges and discharges the newly created battery. I repeat this process for different formulations of chemicals and the data is recorded. The best part of the placement is the freedom I have to try my own ideas. For example, after reading some research papers and learning how to process electrodes under the new manufacturing technique, I was given the responsibility to design, manufacture and test my own electrodes! It has also been very exciting to see the results of the tests as these are completely novel electrode compositions. If all goes well, the results obtained will be reproducible and form the basis of a publishable research paper.