Note: this page is from 2018 and is kept for archival value.
For current Summer Exchange program information, visit the Summer Exchange announcement and follow the appropriate links from there.
2018 Summer Exchange Internship Information
MDSGC’s 2018 Summer Exchange program will exchange student interns among participating universities for a 10-week engineering internship experience. The program invites qualified students at participating institutions to apply for hands-on summer engineering internships at any of the other institutions, supported by Maryland Space Grant Consortium. Interested students should contact the faculty coordinator (see below) at their home institution for more information.
The link to the application is at the bottom of this page. Please read this page carefully before applying!
As of mid-May 2018, all positions have been filled.
Eligibility. Applicants must be:
- U.S. citizens.
- Rising sophomore, junior, or senior engineering majors. Please note some projects have prerequisites that may require particular experience.
- Currently enrolled at one of the following five Maryland universities: Capitol Technology University (CTU), Morgan State University (MSU), University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), University of Maryland College Park (UMCP), or University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES).
- Interested in working at one of the participating universities other than their home institution. Example: UMBC students are not eligible to apply for the internship offered at UMBC through this program.
- Available to work for at least 10 weeks during the summer of 2018.
Available Projects
On the application, students will be asked to rank their top three choices of project, specified by “Project ID”, listed in the table below.
| Project ID | Title, Mentor, and Project Description |
|---|---|
| CTU-1 | Title: Cyber Battle Lab Internship Mentor: William Butler -- Capitol Technology University Project Description: Become a part of an exciting cutting edge high tech team leading the Cyber Battle Lab. The CBL is the center of all cyber activities at the University. It is a dynamic environment that requires a staff that is both technically proficient and welcoming to the entire student body. This position is responsible for supporting course lab periods, competitions, graduate research and senior projects. This job requires a basic knowledge of computers to include windows and UNIX operating systems, programming scripting and basic cyber security tools. Desired qualifications include knowledge/familiarity with: Linux/UNIX, C programming language, Python scripting, NMap, NESSUS, Wireshark, Raspberry Pi. The position will provide the opportunity to learn some of these skills, so they are not a prerequisite to apply. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| CTU-2 | Title: Satellite Ground Systems Integration and Test Mentors: Angela Walters and Marcel Mabson -- Capitol Technology University Project Description: Work will be performed on CapTechU's Space Flight Operations Training Center (SFOTC). The SFOTC uses the same software as NASA missions. The SFOTC software was donated by the Hammers company and consists of Galaxy Telemetry and Command system and VirtualSat high fidelity simulator. The intern will work on enhancement and maintenance of the SFOTC and will be mentored by CapTechU faculty and a Hammers employee. The intern will receive training on the SFOTC software; tasks include working on integrating and testing new modules into existing SFOTC software. Specific tasks include: --Assist with the installation and testing of the SFOTC trending software --Integrating and testing new modules into existing SFOTC software --Development of test documentation --Anomaly tracking and resolution --Develop and Test SFOTC spacecraft simulator latch value component --Develop automated demo procedures --May be required to spend time at the Hammers offices Desired skills: --Use of a scripting language --Programming in C or another high level language --Familiarity with the Linux Operation System --Familiarity with Cesium Spacecraft Visualization Tool (optional) --Willing to work some late afternoon and evenings for meetings with Hammers mentor This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| MSU-1 | Title: Emissions Characteristics Study of Conventional and Alternative Aviation Fuels Mentor: Seong Lee -- Morgan State University Project Description: Rising fuel costs, an increasing desire to enhance security of energy supply and potential environmental benefits have driven research interest into alternative renewable fuels for aviation and aircraft engine. Our Research Objectives include: (1) Understand and compare fuel properties (e.g. composition, heat content) of conventional (e.g. Jet A) with alternative aviation fuels (e.g. bio-diesel, fatty acid methyl ester); (2) Investigate and compare the emissions including Particulate Matter(PM), CO2, CO, NOx and SOx and their characteristics from conventional and alternative aviation fuels; (3) Explore the effect of mixing ratio of conventional and alternative aviation fuels on emissions. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| MSU-2 | Title: Drone Usage to Assist with Security Issues on University Campus Mentor: Richard Pitts -- Morgan State University Project Description: The purpose of the research will be to develop an alternative for security surveillance on the campus of Morgan State University (MSU). The platform that will be used in the research will be a Parrot AR Drone or similar. The primary focus is to use drones to assist with security issues on the university's campus. Students are expected to use programming skills (C++, Python, or Java) to pilot the drone to cover specific areas around the MSU School of Engineering. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| MSU-3 | Title: Applying Machine Learning to Social Media Data Analysis Mentor: Kofi Nyarko -- Morgan State University Project Description: Morgan State University (MSU) partnered with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to create a set of online visualizations that enables the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) to engage in interactive analysis of social media data. Over the course of the project, MSU developed an experimental social media data collection infrastructure, which enables the university to continuously monitor and collect tweets from certain designated accounts in addition to all associated engagements with those accounts. MSU will continue to expand this social media data collection and analysis infrastructure in order to enable the BPD to continuously and actively derive actionable analytics from their social media presence while enabling the undergraduate and graduate students at MSU to gain experience in data science tasks, including data collection, processing, cleaning, transformation, visualization and analysis using machine learning principles. MSU will provide students with an experiential education that emphasizes the application, evaluation, and creation of data analytics methodologies designed to further improve the BPD's ability to positively engage with the public that they serve. This position is appropriate for a student with an interest in software development and machine learning. Some Python experience is a prerequisite. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| UMBC-1 | Title: Air Breakdown and Plasma Spectroscopy at Low Pressures and High Flow Rates Mentor: Prof. Carlos Romero-Talamás -- University of Maryland, Baltimore County Project Description: Summer interns will participate in investigations of plasma spectroscopy at a wide range of pressures for air and other gas mixtures. The goal is to aid in the design and fabrication of a sounding rocket payload that will attempt to obtain atomic emission spectra of air at very low pressures and high flow rates. The instrument is being developed at UMBC in collaboration with Capitol Technology University. Tasks will include, among others, the CAD design, fabrication, and assembly of vacuum components; spectrometer triggering through custom circuitry; data analysis; report writing, and working with other undergraduate and graduate students from UMBC and CapTech. This project aims to recruit two interns. |
| UMCP-1 | Title: Prototyping Arms for a Lightweight Robotic Servicing System Mentor: Dave Akin -- University of Maryland, College Park Project Description: The summer intern working in the Space Systems Laboratory will be tasked with designing, fabricating, assembling, and testing a pair of robot manipulator mockups for the EUCLID underwater vehicle. EUCLID is a prototype of a small spacecraft which might be used in the future for satellite repair and space station maintenance. As the first step towards equipping the existing EUCLID vehicle with operating manipulators, the summer intern will design a pair of simulated manipulators to be built using 3D printing and plastic piping. These manipulators will be mounted on EUCLID to assess its ability to maneuver underwater with the added mass and drag of robotic arms. The manipulator mockups will not be functional, but should be capable of being manually positioned to represent arm poses for various EUCLID tasks. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| UMCP-2 | Title: Engineering Education and Outreach Internship with Women in Engineering Program Mentors: Mary Bowden and Becky Kenemuth -- University of Maryland, College Park Project Description: The intern's tasks will include collaborating with other WIE staff to design an engineering project that will be carried out by middle-school program participants during July (last year's project involved designing and 3D printing beehives) and helping to teach summer introductory engineering and coding workshops for high-school students. The intern will also be involved in payload development and weather balloon launch operations that occur in June and July; some weekend participation will be necessary. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| UMES-1 | Title: Autonomous Instrumented Robotics Sensory Platforms to Advance Creativity and Engage Students (AIRSPACES) Mentors: Chris Hartman, Madhumi Mitra, Travis Ford, Zhang Lei, Abhijit Nagchaudhuri -- University of Maryland, Eastern Shore Project Description: The intern will work in a multidisciplinary team in both field and laboratory settings. While the project will be of interest to all engineering majors, it would be best to identify a student with interest in advanced software tools for data analysis and/or sensors and instrumentation for field experiments. The student will be exposed to remote sensing efforts using small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) and design and development efforts for mobile robotic sensory platforms in water (Autonomous Surface Boat (ASB)) and on the ground (Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV)). Some familiarity with C, MATLAB and Arduino Microprocessor board will be valuable to the project team. If interested, the student can also support image processing and data analyses efforts using one or more of the following software environments ArCMAP, PIX4D, SMS Advanced, MATLAB and SPSS. All of these efforts are integrated with the broad framework of Smart Agriculture and Automation efforts at UMES. While the exchange student will get broad exposure to all related project efforts, depending on the interest and competencies of the student selected a particular aspect will be focused on for the exchange program experience. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
| UMES-2 | Title: Support Efforts in the Robotics and/or Control Laboratory in the New Engineering Building at UMES Mentors: Abhijit Nagchaudhuri and Ibrahim Mamoun Project Description: The Robotics, Automation, and Mechatronics (RAM) laboratory and Control Systems Laboratory are in the early stages of development in the new engineering building at UMES. These laboratories will be largely used for undergraduate instruction in courses such as robotics and control systems for engineering students. These laboratories will also support K-12 outreach and graduate research in the future. The robotics lab is equipped with state of the art industrial SCARA and six degree of freedom articulated robotic arm as well as other educational platforms such as Microbot Teachmover, IRobot Create2, Go Pi Go 2, and Phantomx Pincher robot. The controls lab has several electro-mechanical systems including a magnetic levitation device, ball and beam device, active suspension system, inverted pendulum and other mechatronic devices. The selected student will work with the educational robotic devices and if logistics permit can be engaged with some of the instructional and demonstration effort in the robotics lab for a 2 week long outreach effort that will be held in UMES in mid to late July or early August. Also depending on interest and ability, the student can work with the set-up of selected equipment in the controls laboratory. Some familiarity with MATLAB and Simulink software environment, CAD, 3-D printing and a broad interest in robotics and control systems will be beneficial. Efforts can be adapted to exposure and expertise of the selected exchange student, however junior/senior engineering majors who have already taken a course in control systems will be more appropriate. This project aims to recruit one intern. |
How to Apply
The deadline for online submission of applications has been extended to March 23, 2018. As of mid-May 2018, all positions have been filled.
(I) Interested students must obtain the endorsement of the faculty coordinator at their home institution or one of the internship mentors. Coordinators will help guide students toward appropriate projects and will provide the password needed to submit an application via the link below. Contact your home institution’s coordinator to request their endorsement (and application password) and get their advice:
Capitol Technology University — Prof. Angela Walters
Morgan State University — Prof. Guangming Chen
University of Maryland, Baltimore County — Prof. Carlos Romero-Talamás
University of Maryland, College Park — Prof. Mary Bowden
University of Maryland, Eastern Shore — Prof. Abhijit Nagchaudhuri
(II) Completing the application requires (1) current student information including contact information and GPA; (2) a PDF resume or CV; (3) a PDF “statement of interest” (one page or less) that should explain your goals for your internship and your overall career; (4) contact information for one person who can provide a letter of recommendation; (5) your top three choices among the projects listed on this page.
(III) Here is the link to the password-protected application page. Contact your home institution’s coordinator to request their endorsement and the password.
Stipend and Housing Costs
Summer housing is commonly offered by the hosting institution. In such cases, for interns who accept, MDSGC will pay the housing costs directly and provide a 10-week stipend of $4,000. For interns who choose to arrange their own housing, MDSGC will provide a 10-week stipend of $6,000.
For general questions, please contact MDSGC.