Most summers, SkuTek hires paid interns that work on DOE-funded SBIR research and helped develop SkuTek products. Our fantastic summer interns this year were Iris Bassin (RIT: Engineering Exploration, pictured left) and Charlie Vitkus (West Irondequoit High School, pictured right).
Iris’ Work
Iris just finished her first undergraduate year at RIT, and has already helped us greatly with product development! Our FemtoDAQ Kingfisher and Chickadee-32 digitizers both have a Microbone (a custom design based on the BeagleBone® Black) for software control. These boards undergo thorough testing (hardware and software) to make sure they will function properly when inserted into the digitizer. Iris very quickly picked up the practical hardware skills needed to sure these circuit boards are performant under stress.
After testing Microbones, she also assembled and tested many FemtoDAQ Vireo digitizers. While the testing process here was even more involved, Iris succeeded and also offered critical feedback on the testing process to make it better and more efficient.
Iris also applied her creativity to draft, prototype, and test an Op-Amp distributor board. This board’s goal is to split digital inputs to many outputs for use in testing, a critical tool in troubleshooting and testing many SkuTek digitizers at once. After asking many good questions, she not only designed the circuit board necessary to distribute the digital signal, but also did layout for her own PCB to test the principle of her design.
Charlie’s Work
Charlie joined us right after graduating from high school in West Irondequoit. With a history in web development, he has given invaluable feedback on the layout of our web GUIs and other interfaces. He also has a knack for advertisement, and has assisted with our commercialization tasks.
During his internship, he has learned the basics of digital Data Acquisition at our company looks like. From this, he’s assisted in the development of product showcases and marketing. He planned and shot marketing videos for our FemtoDAQ Vireo, and assisted in the setup of the cosmic ray demo.
We are very thankful that Iris and Charlie joined us his summer!
