Student Life

Guest bloggers: Carolyn Coyle ’13, Larissa Kunz ’15, Maggie Kane ’15, and Knox Millsaps SM ’87, PhD ’92

From left: Maggie Kane '15, Carolyn Coyle '13, and Larissa Kunz '15.

Three MIT students, Carolyn Coyle (mechanical engineering), Larissa Kunz (chemical engineering) , and Maggie Kane (aero/astro), spent the month of January completing an externship in Monterey, California, working at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). Their extern sponsor* was Professor Knox Millsaps SM ’87, PhD ’92, chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

The first two days were spent getting checked in and touring the department’s extensive research facilities and laboratories in power, energy and propulsion, space and satellite systems, guidance, navigation and control of autonomous vehicles, material science, and applied and experimental mechanics. Many faculty were involved in showcasing their labs and thesis students’ research. Carolyn, Larissa, and Maggie then selected research projects to work on that aligned with their interests.

Carolyn:
I worked with Professor Millsaps and Professor Jonathan Phillips to create a thermodynamic model of a Trident missile gas discharge system that predicts flow temperature and pressure behaviors as functions of time. I spent most of my time in the computer lab, combing my knowledge of thermal fluids engineering and technical computing to write code that solves a system of coupled, differential equations in Engineering Equation Solver (EES), a processing program with built-in real fluid property tables. The model will be used as a template that can be modified and used to characterize many specific projects in the future.

From left: Larissa Kunz '15, Carolyn Coyle '13, and Maggie Kane '15.

Larissa:
I worked on a diesel engine in the marine propulsion laboratory. I gained CAD experience designing an adaptor to secure a pressure sensor in the head of the engine. This sensor is to be used in the research of the combustion of biofuels and in the use of a transient plasma ignition system in this diesel engine. Doug Seivwright, with whom I was working directly, also had me help set up a data acquisition system to record sensor measurements electronically. I was fortunate enough to get some hands-on experience as well, when I helped put the engine back together after it was modified for experimentation and participated in a Cold Spray Unit training in a neighboring laboratory.

Maggie:
I worked at the turbo propulsion lab creating a program to facilitate the importation of data from a program in MATLAB to Solid Edge to expedite the iteration of splintered blade axial rotor compressors to allow for easier analysis of fluid-dynamic properties. This program will be used by graduate students at NPS as they work towards a design that will allow for greater efficiency in airplanes. I also had the opportunity to tour the facilities, including the Turbo Lab’s wind tunnel. I was lucky enough to be able to learn about MATLAB in a practical environment, as it is a skill that I will continue to use throughout my time at MIT.

In addition to working in our respective labs at NPS, Professor Millsaps took us to visit other nearby research facilities. We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, where Jim Bellingham ’84, SM ’84, PhD ’88, the director of research and CTO, led us on a tour during which we learned about the development of vehicles to remotely explore the oceans. We also visited the marine meteorology division of the Monterey branch of the Naval Research Laboratory, one of the world leaders in numerical weather prediction. Simon Cheng, the lab’s technical director, and various experts presented about specialized weather forecasting, advanced algorithms, and modeling techniques. Our externship concluded with a farewell barbeque in the beautiful California sunshine.

*Editor’s note: This is part of a series of posts from MIT students and alumni who were involved in the 2012 Student/Alumni Externship Program, which connected current students to alumni in workplaces worldwide during MIT’s Independent Activities Period. Alumni, learn how to get involved. This is just one way for alumni to interact with MIT students. Learn about other opportunities.

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Guest blogger: Jesse Kirkpatrick ’15
Externship* host: Thomas Cervantes ’11

Jesse Kirkpatrick '15 in the lab.

When I wrote my series of articles in The Tech spotlighting the externship program and all that it has to offer, I was a reporter, synthesizing the anecdotes of others into something that people hopefully read and found interesting. I learned about one student who had spent IAP on a farm in the French countryside, and another who had received a summer internship offer from Bank of America after spending a month there as an extern.

But until I got the chance to experience it for myself, I had no idea just how fulfilling an externship could be.

I spent a month working on the coolest project ever. I was lucky enough to get an offer to extern at the Vacanti Lab, a Mass General tissue engineering lab. I was put to work on the lab’s liver project, which seeks to engineer implantable liver tissue constructs. The project has the potential to save thousands of lives.

In tissue engineering, one of the greatest challenges is blood supply. The organs in our bodies are embedded with a fine and precise array of tiny blood vessels, which usually must run within 100 micrometers of every cell to sustain life. The liver happens to have a rather intricate blood vessel architecture, which had previously been modeled by the Vacanti Lab and milled into a brass mold. My goal was to use this mold to fabricate devices that could sustain blood flow and allow for viable liver cell seeding. This would be the first step toward a tissue-engineered liver construct.

It was cool having the independence to really think critically about challenges and implement potential solutions. Tom Cervantes, my awesome sponsor and mentor, taught me lab techniques, tutored me in the CAD software SolidWorks, and showed me how to think and plan like an engineer. He mentored me at every step of the design and fabrication process.

The biggest challenge was bonding a nanoporous membrane to the device such that liver cells could interact freely with the tissue-engineered blood vessels below. As it turns out, there are a ton of different kinds of membranes. Some are completely impermeable, some permeable only to gases but not to nutrients, some are permeable to both but don’t bond well with the material of the device, and some are just so flimsy that they’ll burst with the slightest pressure. This was one of the many engineering challenges that I had to wade through during my month at the lab, and each one gave me a valuable new perspective on the liver project as a whole.

I became extremely invested in the project. I would sometimes stay at the lab until 6:00 or even 7:00, fabricating new devices or testing prototypes. At the end of the month, I presented my project to the entire lab, and heard some insightful feedback from people who had been working in the field for decades. Though it was admittedly a scary experience, it helped me recognize some of the details that I may have neglected, and allowed me to take a step back and view the project from another viewpoint.

My externship has ended, but my work is not done. I’ll be staying on as an intern during the spring term, and I look forward to making even more progress on the liver device. It’s an exciting time for tissue engineering, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

*Editor’s note: This is part of a series of posts from MIT students and alumni who were involved in the 2012 Student/Alumni Externship Program, which connected current students to alumni in workplaces worldwide during MIT’s Independent Activities Period. Alumni, learn how to get involved.

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