Students Success Stories :

Neil Sikka
Major: Computer Engineering
Co-op/Intern Employer:
ITT - AdvancedEngineering and Sciences
Location: Herndon, Virginia

It is unusual for a student that just completed their freshman year to obtain an internship. Why did you choose to participate in an internship and did the experience shape your career goals?

I participated in this internship because I wanted to get experience with engineering in the real world, sharpen my programming skills, and learn more about the Nintendo's wiimote and how to write device drivers. It has gotten me more excited about engineering, and given me an idea about how engineers work in the real world.

Many freshman hesitate to apply to internship positions because they believe that they are not able to perform interesting tasks after completing only one year of school. Briefly describe your co-op employer, your major responsibilities, and any highlights of this work assignment.

My responsibility was to write a device driver for the nintendo Wiimote and then write an application that uses that driver. My other major responsibility was to select and build a Singe board computer that will serve all of our purposes including heavy external device I/O, graphical processing, small size, and low power usage. I learned most of the things I used in my job in High School. The most helpful classes for my position were Calculus 1, Physics 161, Trigonometry, and Computer Programming in C. The advantages of my work assignments were that I learned a lot, enjoyed them, and that they were very interesting. The disadvantages were that they were often very difficult and time consuming.

I received support from my supervisor and the relationship benefited my learning experience. He gave me an overview of every task he assigned to me. After he told me about what he wanted me to do, I went on the internet and researched it more. This relationship has benefited me because is has shown me many applications of my knowledge to the real world.

What types of skills did the job require? What new skills did you gain (i.e. software, interpersonal, communication, etc.)?

The job required programming skills and system integration/building skills. It required a lot of system debugging skills as well, because I had to fix a lot of problems in the computers and optimize their performance for our application. It also required a lot of communication skills as I had to talk with many representatives from many different companies, as well as many people inside my company

What advice would you give to other engineering students seeking a co-op or internship?

I suggest that other students considering an assignment at this location should do it because it is great. My overall rating of this position was outstanding.