A summer internship for American college students is almost as important as going to school. If you are an aspiring archeologist you head to Israel. If you are an artist, you spend the summer in Florence, but if you are a scientist interested in climate change you might want to intern in the United States.
Climate research and the development of renewable energy systems like wind turbines is part of that.
A summer at Sandia National Laboratories typically means high temperatures, blazing sunlight and campuses filled with 75 interns.
About 75 of these young innovators have come to Sandia labs in New Mexico this summer as part of the Future of Research for Climate, Earth and Energy Intern Institute. Another 75 interns participate remotely. The FORCEE institute provides undergraduate and graduate students with real-world experience in conducting research on topics in earth sciences, climate change, decarbonization and infrastructure modernization.
Sandia grew out of America’s World War II effort to develop the first atomic bombs. Today, keeping the US nuclear stockpile safe, secure, and effective is a major part of Sandia’s work as a multidisciplinary, national security, engineering laboratory. Sandia’s role has evolved to address additional threats facing our country.
The students receive mentorship, attend facility tours and seminars, and can take part in an end-of-summer symposium to present their findings.
“I have a real passion for interns; I think they are the future of this laboratory,” said Kyle Jones, a manager at the institute. “One of the institute’s goals is to attract new talent to the Labs. I look at interns as team members doing real research. I want an intern program to foster a mentality that makes them feel like they are making a difference.”
The program started in 2021 as the brainchild of Jones, the manager of a geophysics department, with a small geoscience intern program. In the summer of 2022, FORCEE became a full intern institute with a broader mandate.
Last summer, 150 interns came to Sandia through the FORCEE Institute. The interns were equally split between undergraduate and graduate students, with one Coast Guard Academy student and three clerical interns. As of May 2024, 29 former FORCEE interns became Sandia employees: 28 were hired as staff members and one as a postdoctoral researcher.
Each FORCEE summer intern works under the guidance of a Sandia researcher on projects in climate change, geosciences and energy research.
“An intern is more than capable of doing meaningful work: researching, producing, data processing, whatever the case may be,” Jones said. “By handing off these tasks to the students, it frees the mentors to tackle more challenging aspects of the work. It’s a real symbiotic relationship.”
One intern, Gordon North Piegan III, began the summer of 2022 with Rachid Darbali-Zamora, a Sandia electrical engineer. Using his background in control systems, Piegan accurately modeled a wind turbine-generator system and validated it against field data as part of the Wind Hybrid Integration Platform project, according to Darbali-Zamora.
Darbali-Zamora was impressed with Piegan’s results and recommended that he submit them as a conference paper — Piegan’s first. Darbali-Zamora guided Piegan through the process of writing the research paper, and when it was accepted, through creating and practicing a presentation.
“In addition to the great technical work and contributions Gordon or any FORCEE intern brings to the table, there’s also the satisfaction of seeing someone grow,” Darbali-Zamora said. “For me, mentoring and helping others grow in their career and personal life is the most gratifying part of this job. I’ve learned something different from every intern that I’ve had.”
Piegan went on to become a year-round FORCEE intern, and his wind turbine modeling project became the focus of his master’s thesis at Montana State University.
Jones added that the FORCEE internship program fosters partnerships with professors and universities. Darbali-Zamora now has a collaboration with Piegan’s Ph.D. adviser at George Mason University as an example.
Melissa Louie, now a Sandia chemical engineer, participated in the FORCEE program while a chemical engineering master’s student at Cornell University in the summer of 2022. During the internship, she worked with Evan Sproul and Brandon Ennis on optimizing carbon fibers for wind turbine blade caps.
“It was super inspiring to see everything everyone was working on, especially in the renewables space,” Louie said. “When we went on tours of the Solar Tower and saw the wind turbine blades in Building 6585, it was really cool to see that everyone was excited about their work.”
Louie now gives back to the FORCEE program by providing on-site support for the summer 2024 interns, just as she did for the summer 2023 interns. Her role includes coordinating weekly informal lunches, facilitating connections among the interns, which she considers one of the program’s most valuable aspects, and serving as a point of contact for things they may hesitate to raise to their mentors.
