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Dennis Waldron ’10 (Owings, Md.) is an electrical and computer engineering major. During the summer, Waldron completed an internship with the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) in the Department of the Navy. He worked under the guidance of electrical and computer engineering graduate Brandon Cochenour ’03. Waldron will be working on similar research this year with William Jemison, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The following is a first-person account of Waldron’s experiences.
Working at NAVAIR was a wonderful summer experience for me. Everyone was more than willing to take time out of their day to answer any of my questions or give advice. The amount of exposure I got to engineers in the workplace and to hardware and software is unparalleled by any other program I have seen. Not only did I get to know my mentors, but I also worked alongside other interns and toured labs in the engineering buildings on base at Patuxent River Naval Air Station.
My mentor, Brandon, was great to work with. He is very knowledgeable and answered all of my questions, which were many since my first engineering courses start this fall. Even with my complete lack of prior experience, he was able to explain what I needed to know on a basic level, and then teach me more as I gained familiarity with the subject. His method of breaking a large project into many small and manageable tasks greatly enhanced my overall grasp of the systems I was working with.
Because of this exposure and training, I like to think of the time I spent at NAVAIR as a college lab course brought to the real world: I was able to get on the job training with hardware and software used in the electrical engineering industry. Some of what I worked with was specific to my tasks with the underwater optical communications system, but most of the experience I gained is applicable to any future work I will engage in.
In the near future, I plan to start work with Dr. Jemison, who has submitted a paper to the Journal of Lightwave Technology that contains theoretical work done with solid-state lasers. During the school year, I will be working with software called LASCAD to model and verify some of the theories presented in this article.
I would like to thank Dr. Jemison and Brandon Cochenour and Dr. Linda Mullen of NAVAIR for making my summer experience possible. In the future, I hope to have an opportunity to work with both Dr. Jemison and NAVAIR on a joint project that will benefit both Lafayette and the Navy. We are currently looking into this possibility.