Published: August 12, 2007 01:19 am      

High-tech summer learning

Interns spend the break with local companies

FAIRMONT — Throughout the area, university students are gaining experience at high-tech companies through summer internships.

Two interns at Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions’ BEACON center participated in a directed research project on biometrics this summer. Ryan Cox and Jason Graham, both 22 and West Virginia University seniors, wrote a piece of software that tracks different parts of the hand and arm. They started their internships in June, and they will finish up this week.

Mike Webb, principal project engineer for Lockheed Martin, is the supervisor for the interns. Webb has been with Lockheed Martin for eight years and has worked in the industry for 30 years.

“With Mike’s help, we have a fully functioning program that will track users’ hands,” Cox said. “We learned how to work on our own with minimal supervision and (how to) work together as a team.”

Webb said the way an individual expresses himself or herself is a biometric, a characteristic of that person that identifies them. The interns worked on applications with biometrics and created a tracking program that finds hands and arms. This project is one more component of a future biometrics system, Webb said.

The Biometric Experimentation and Advanced Concepts (BEACON) center, located in White Hall, celebrated its grand opening May 17. It is dedicated to biometrics and serves as a cooperative facility for small businesses, academia, other industry partners and customers.

Webb said the BEACON center allows students to participate in emerging ideas at the undergraduate level and gives them a valuable and unique experience. He tailored the image processing and tracking project to meet the backgrounds of the interns.

Cox, from Charleston, is majoring in biometrics and electrical engineering, and Graham, from Clay, is majoring in electrical engineering and mathematics. They brought their own experiences to the endeavor, but they’ve also developed other skills through the internship.

The interns’ work will go into Lockheed Martin’s permanent archives at the BEACON, Webb said. But this is just the beginning of the research project, which can move in a number of directions from this point.

“This will be our ongoing BEACON project,” Webb said. “This is a good start to a BEACON application. We were able to do unique new work.”

Leslie Holoweiko, senior communications representative for Lockheed Martin, said it’s important for the company to make interns feel like they’re part of the company. Interns go through training like other employees and also learn about work ethic, Webb said.

“Internships provide us a vehicle for (finding) new talent and getting a head start on recruiting,” Webb said.

At the end of May, 22-year-old Kris Denardi started his summer internship at Global Science & Technology in Fairmont. Denardi, a West Virginia University senior majoring in geography, is from Fairmont and attended Fairmont Senior High School.

While searching on GST’s Web site, he found out about internship opportunities at the company. He applied last year and didn’t get accepted, but he tried again this year and got the job.

“I knew they were a really good technology company in the area,” he said. “I knew I could get good experience here.”

Geographic information systems (GIS) is the specific area Denardi is studying in school, and he’s gained experience in that area as an intern at GST.

“They brought me in here to determine what kind of role this company could establish in GIS (programs) in West Virginia,” he said. “I’ve just been focusing on coming up with ideas for applications.”

This summer, he has done research under the supervision of Cannon Wadsworth, director of state and commercial projects for GST. Wadsworth said the company works with most counties in West Virginia to help them develop geographic information systems.

Denardi and Wadsworth have met with county customers to assist them in planning for their GIS programs. While attending many city and county meetings, Denardi has learned how to acquire information from different areas of the government and how to unify that data for mapping purposes.

Wadsworth said GIS programs require diplomacy among city, county and state representatives, and cooperation is necessary between these government bodies to pull a GIS project together.

Kris was already familiar with the pieces of information that go into the system, but he wasn’t as aware of what it took to obtain that information, Wadsworth said. This summer, he experienced the administrative side of getting a GIS program started.

Denardi’s previous internships were mostly technical with a lot of mapping and mouse clicking, he said. During his time at GST, he has seen the business and management aspects of GIS.

Wadsworth said GST hires local students to work on specific projects, and these internships give students the opportunity to see what the company is doing in the technology sector. Internships have led to permanent jobs at GST in the past.

“We hire interns for different reasons depending on what their experience is,” he said. “(Denardi) actually brought a lot of experience that we didn’t have, so it was nice having him for the summer.”

Denardi’s internship will end later this month, and he feels that this job has been beneficial for his future career path.

“I’ve been around a lot of helpful and friendly people here (and) got a lot of experience,” he said. “GST is definitely a good company for helping West Virginia move in the right direction.”

Nineteen-year-old Justin Williams, a sophomore at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, has done a lot of financial reporting as a summer intern at Fairmont’s L-3 Communications Titan Corp., which supports NASA with software independent verification and validation work.

Williams, who lives in Pennsylvania near Hundred, W.Va., is a biochemistry major. He said he has learned “all kinds of things” through his internship.

Jeff Moore, who works in L-3’s finance department as a program control financial analyst, is Williams’ supervisor and has given him a lot of direction and tips on ways to use programs more efficiently. Williams has helped streamline reporting, has done reconciliations, and has learned about Visual Basic and Microsoft Excel functions.

“The intern’s been learning a lot about government work, a little bit of the attention to detail on the high quality processes that we have to go through in order to provide quality to the customer,” Moore said.

He said it’s important for L-3 to provide internship opportunities that give students on-the-job experience and show them what the work environment is like.

“I hadn’t had an in-depth knowledge of the financial world, but I had my eyes opened,” Williams said. “I’ve just basically learned a lot about the everyday work life. I’m thankful for the opportunity, and I’ve had a good time.”

E-mail Jessica Legge at jlegge@timeswv.com.