News Release

The Team Internship Program at the Jacobs School of Engineering

The Summer 2011 Shopzilla TIP Team (in alphabetical order): Philip Cheng, William Charles Lennon, Dorothy Nguyen, Hesler Rodriguez and David Yu.

San Diego, CA, November 9, 2011 -- Do you need a team of top-notch interns to handle a project for your company over the summer? The Team Internship Program, or TIP, at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering can help.

Each summer, multidisciplinary teams of students tackle real engineering problems at companies throughout the nation and the world. Each team completes a significant project over the course of 10 weeks. Projects often result in patents or prototypes for the team’s corporate partner. During summer 2011, 236 students worked on 76 on-site teams, including 4 international groups, at 36 companies. TIP is run through the Corporate Affiliates Program at the Jacobs School.

To inquire about hiring a TIP team next summer, visit: www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/TIP.

Michael Hii, a fourth-year electrical engineering student, went to work for Qualcomm in Beijing as a summer 2011 TIP team member. He helped develop an augmented reality proof-of-concept app for Android phones. The experience encouraged Hii and his teammates to be independent, he said.

Exposure to a real work environment was a big perk for TIP participant Gregory Pinkel, who is earning a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering. Pinkel worked on a flexible solar array TIP project at SAIC last summer with UC San Diego chemistry master’s student Danny Chan. “I learned a lot of chemistry that would have been hard to learn otherwise…practical information….tips and tricks you can only get from people who are in the field,” said Pinkel.

“Everyone with a hammer sees a nail,” said mechanical engineering senior Kai Woodard who worked on SAIC’s solar hydrogen TIP team last summer, with chemical engineering senior Wesley Luc. The interdisciplinary nature of their team helped them keep a broad perspective – they didn’t both have a hammer. The TIP project involved dismantling a solar concentrator dish in order to test it.

Media Contacts

Daniel Kane
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-3262
dbkane@ucsd.edu

Ioana Patringenaru
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-822-0899
ipatrin@ucsd.edu