S01-E11 Sean is an intern at NASA

Sean works as an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory or JPL which is part of NASA. He is working remotely on computer modeling. Sean talks about his education journey, how to secure internships, and the benefits of internships at places like NASA.

The Talking Technicians podcast is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program.

Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation.

Join the conversation. If you are a working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org.

Links from the show:

The Micro Nano Technology Education Center (MNT-EC): https://micronanoeducation.org/

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at NASA: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

Take a virtual tour of JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/virtual-tour/

Episode Web Page: https://micronanoeducation.org/students-parents/talking-technicians-podcast/

Transcript

Peter 0:02  
From MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center. This is Talking Technicians, the podcast about technicians, who they are, what they do and where they come from. I'm your host, Peter Kazarinoff. I teach technicians and engineers at Portland Community College. In each episode, you'll meet a working technician and hear their story. That means real interviews with real technicians about real jobs. At the end of each episode, you'll hear actions you can take if you want to be a technician, too. In this episode, you'll meet Sean. Sean works at JPL located in Pasadena, California, but Sean's remote in Portland, Oregon. Sean, welcome to Talking Technicians.

Sean 0:52
Hey Peter. Happy to be here.

Peter 0:54
So tell me about yourself. Where do you live and how long you've been there for?

Sean 0:59
So I currently live in Portland, Oregon and I've been here for about 10 years. I moved here right after I graduated from college. First time, I guess it'll be only time I graduated from college. And yeah, yeah, So 10 years I've been here.

Peter 1:19
And I mentioned in the intro that you work for JPL. What is JPL stand for? And where's that compared to where you are and how do you do that?

Sean 1:29
So GPL stands for Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and they're one of the many NASA centers around the US. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. You may have heard of Houston or Cape Canaveral. JPL was just another NASA center and it's located in Pasadena, California, which is basically part of Los Angeles and Southern California.

Peter 1:55
But you work remotely in Portland, Oregon. How does that work?

Sean 2:00
Right. So most of the work I'm doing for JPL is software focused at the moment. I'm doing some modeling work and we can go - go into what that means a little bit later. But basically, I just worked from my computer at home. If in indifferent times I would've been if there wasn't a global pandemic going on, I probably would have been in Pasadena and doing my internship there by given the circumstances and I'm happy to, you know, work remotely.

Peter 2:29
And what's your job title at JPL? What do you do day-to-day?

Sean 2:34
I suppose I'm a research intern at the moment. The day-to-day work can really change. In some sense, a lot of it is an educational experience. They, I worked for a science team that works on modelling basically how, how ice sheets evolve through time and, and the subsequent sea level rise. And so we're doing really detailed modeling to try to do predictions into the future of what effects of climate change or other factors might be. 

Peter 3:19
How much do interns make it JPL and NASA?

Sean 3:24
So yeah, that's a good question. And I actually had a previous NASA internship over the last summer that paid the same, so I can say it. JPL and other nasa centers pay the same. I did the math and it's roughly $17 an hour. But we’re were paid as a in three big lumps as a stipend basically. So for 16 weeks of work, I made somewhere around $11,000.

Peter 3:54
And you mentioned that you do software modeling. Does that entail? And what kind of skills have you learned to be able to do that kind of work?

Sean 4:04
Sure, so here at GPL software packages, it's called the ice sheet and scalable system model. And it's been written by a team of scientists at JPL and University of California, Irvine over the past decade or so. And as part of some cutting edge research they're doing on, ice sheet modelling and sea level modeling. Most of that software is all written in C, the C programming language that does all of the backend work. But for me, what I'm working in and what most of the interns working in and what anyone who would use this software except for the developers are working in is MATLAB. And so there's basically an interface of MATLAB on top of the, the, the C language that allows us to do stuff a little more easily. And day-to-day, I am doing toy models. Maybe I'm doing an experiment saying like, let's say that a 100 meters of ice melted all across Antarctica, what is the subsequent sea level rise in Tokyo? Or so I might set up that as a toy model or I might be what one of the big projects that I'm working on right now with some other interns is we're working on is creating some algorithms that are able to map coastlines from satellite data. And hopefully in the future, we can use that algorithm to track how coastlines are evolving as we have more and more satellite data over the next decades and even centuries. 

Peter 5:33
That sounds really neat. Are there any opportunities for professional growth at JPL and NASA? 

Sean 5:40
I'm sure there are. Within the context of an internship. I know the, the the path is a little strange, but one of the people I work with is a full, a full, full-time inturn, and a PhD student, and basically his job, so to speak, how he pays its bills as he is a full-time in term for this team. While he's getting his PhD. As far as permanent positions, I know that JPL and NASA in general have a sort of breakdown of different types of employees. A lot of them are contractors. But NASA also has a lot of what they would call civil servants. So permanent employees. And as far as I know, the civil service positions are relatively difficult to get because only a fixed number of them exists. Because these are government organizations and they don't tend to grow very much. And so positions only open as people retire. But the contract positions are often open up as needed as big projects come along like let's say, a rovers going to Mars, they need to bring on a bunch of people in all kinds of disciplines to, to help out. So there's definitely opportunities for growth in that sense. I'm not, to be honest, I'm not super keyed-into a lot of the internals of how that would work. But certainly as an intern, um, if if if I had the time that the team that I'm working with would be happy to keep keep keep having me on.

Peter 7:20
How did you land an internship at nasa and JPL pose your work and your education experience before working there?

Sean 7:27
Sure. So I've had sort of interesting journey. The short answer is I applied for it and got the right letters of recommendation, and had the right classes and had the right set of or like an appropriate set of skills and I, I got the job. But the the long answer is that I - you know, I mentioned I moved to Portland right after I got my first degree. My first degree was in in physics. But I got really disillusioned with academia at the time and really spent a lot of time in Portland doing a lot of other things. So I did a lot of rock climbing. I worked at a MakerSpace and learn to weld, learn to do woodworking, and was sort of teaching myself the Python programming language on the side. Just for fun. And because I thought it might be appropriate later on as I've always, I'm always wanting to get into different things that I want to learn. Eventually I went back, decided to go back to school about two years ago for a Mechanical Engineering Degree. And it turned out that these Python skills that I built up that weren't really applicable to where it's not that they weren't applicable, but they weren't part of the mechanical engineering curriculum. Ended up being really useful for a bunch of different things. And that's what ended up landing me my first internship, which wasn't a JPL, it was at their Langley Center in Virginia. And with that team, I was doing more machine learning and statistical analysis related stuff with Python. And yeah, so basically I went on this long journey of learning a bunch of things. And now that I'm back in school, this, this thing that I learned along the way as has helped me land these jobs. Yeah. 

Peter 9:24
What was something unexpected about working in a NASA internship that you only learned after you started?

Sean 9:31
Sure. Well, there's a few things. I guess. I didn't expect there to be. So both of the teams I worked for were both research teams. So they were, there mostly working on projects that aren't so definite. And they're largely funded by, by grants, by internal grants through, through NASA or JPL. And so a lot of their work actually ends up being analyzing what JPL or NASA needs and sort of tailoring what they can research towards it so that they can receive the money to keep researching. The team I work on currently is really, really professors. They work for a university and they're, they're contracted to JPL. And so a lot of they a lot of their work is is focused on how to get paid. Honestly, beep, beep, beep, beep because they aren't permanent employees. Not that it seems to be a problem for them, but I think it's just the nature of doing government-funded research is that there's a lot of stuff you have to do to, to, to secure payment. So that was a little surprising, but it's been really interesting to learn about. Otherwise. I think I've been surprised, or just like pleasantly surprised by how, by how easy going everyone has been. I guess I expected NASA to be this really strict and sort of tight organization. That's that plays by a lot of rules and in some sense it does. But it's been really nice to have people be really playful and humorous and everything as well.

Peter 11:26
What advice would you give current students or people that want to transition careers, like you were talking about earlier, that might want an internship at NASA like you have?

Sean 11:37
Sure. I mean, this is, this might be seem like with your generic advice, but I think the most important thing just about anyone can do is just do what you find interesting and do it, do what you love. You know, I - I'm in a bit of a weird position. I mean, to be honest, I'm actually struggling a little bit with, with how the pandemic has affected me with virtual school, which I really wasn't enjoying. And the reality is I'm, I'm not very motivated by my salary. And so be, I have to enjoy my work. And actually to, to piggyback on the last question a little bit. The, the other thing that's been really surprising is that as much as I really enjoy working with Python in doing these kind of things. I've, I've discovered this year that as a career, I - I really don't want to work alone and my computer in my room. As much as I'm working for NASA, working for JPL, it's amazing. But I'm also struggling in certain ways just because the nature of the work is very difficult for me. So I think I'll be honest with yourself about what you enjoy and what, what's important to you. And, and just, I think everyone sort of find, find a path that way. In my opinion, 

Peter 13:09
What do you imagine is coming up in your future after your internship ends?

Sean 13:14
Sure. So I I've been delaying going back to school until it's back in person. And as of right now, Portland is allowing their universities to be back in person in this coming fall term. So I intend to be back in school. And yeah. Down the line once I graduate or I might be switching over to a - to higher level degree and I'm not really sure exactly my plans are, but the overarching goal is to, to hopefully work for NASA and some real sense, not just as an intern, I've always had a dream of being an astronaut. But, you know, again, I got to be honest with myself, I think it might be a little bit too late for that. I'm not I'm also not like an Air Force pilot and a bunch of other things, but, you know, in my own way I can, if, if working for NASA helps me, help other people be astronauts or help us get probes and everything in the space. That's like that's a really cool thing to do. And so that's really exciting to me. 

Peter 14:26
Besides earning money, what do you see as advantages of getting internships at places like NASA?

Sean 14:31
Sure. Well, I mean, it, it's it's sort of a two-pronged thing where it's an incredible educational experience to work with, you know, like literal rocket scientists, right? I wasn't working with rocket scientist. But real NASA engineers. And see what the see with the nature of their work really is. And these are all like really smart people everyone I work with is, has a PhD. I definitely feel like the dumb one of the room plenty, plenty of the time, but it's really just because I don't have experience. Right. And yeah, and but beyond that, I mean, it just, it looks great on a resume, of course. And I don't know. I think there's, I think if you take pride in your work and do these kind of internships, it, um, it really just gives you - it gives you the confidence to to, to do more and better things. so.

Peter 15:34
Well Sean, thank you so much for sharing your story about how you went from one degree and then learned a bunch of skills and then moved on to internships and also told us about what your future may hold. So please keep in touch. 

Sean 15:51
Sounds good. I will Peter.

Peter 15:55
Bye now. Talking Technicians is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program. Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation. Join the conversation. If you are working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talking technicians.org. We're always looking out for great guests to share more stories with you.