During the summer 2016 NIRA have had 4 summer interns. A few weeks after the summer break is over and the studies have started we managed to get some words with Mattias, Lage, Erik and Jesper when they were visiting NIRA.
What program are you studying (and where)? Which specialization?
We are all studying Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Linköping University, with a master’s in Applied Mathematics or Control- and Information systems.
How did you get in contact with NIRA? What made you interested in doing your summer internship here?
We heard about the internship from lecturers in different courses related to work done by NIRA. Since we enjoyed the topics of those courses and the fact that NIRA seemed like a great place to work at, we applied. We also felt interested in NIRAs products and though the core problem of determining things related to the tires by using existing sensors.
Can you briefly describe what tasks and assignments you have been working with during the summer?
We mostly focused on creating statistical tools for analyzing the performance of algorithms estimating road friction. The majority of the work was done in MATLAB™. But we had several other tasks also. We wrote a new tool to determine load compensation in a new way, cutting down the required data collection time from a day to 30 minutes. We also simplified the task of searching for undefined behavior in product code and worked on automatic generation of test description files for data collection in vehicles.
What are your plans when it comes to further studies and master thesis?
The plans for the future are still quite open and we haven’t put too much thought into our Master Thesis yet, NIRA is certainly and interesting possibility. We are all planning to do our Master Thesis during the spring of 2017.
What’s your thought’s when it comes to your upcoming career?
First of all, most importantly to find a role where we can build some confident in a knowledge area, we have also have a strong wish to work with development of new products and technologies. Also important to be autonomous or independent and intellectually challenged. After a few years we probably find it more important to have a work-life balance. But first, a lot of fun, challenging work were we also can make some money!