Tartan Careers - Jordi Long
Sport: Men's Soccer
Class Year 20-21: Senior
Major: Mechanicl Engineering
Internship Year, Title, and Company
Summer 2020, Mechanical Engineering Intern, Company: Epiphany Environmentala
Application process: I had an abnormal internship as I applied in December of 2019 and started working in January of 2020 during the spring semester.
Why did this internship interest you: This internship caught my attention because of the smaller, start-up environment that the company offered. It gave me a good opportunity to make meaningful connections with the actual employees of the company, in hopes that I would be able to get a return offer. When applying, I looked at the company's website and thought that their mission was meaningful and would be something that I would potentially like to be a part of.
How did you complete the internship - remotely or on-site: I was fortunate enough to start working for this company in January, as I previously mentioned, which gave me an opportunity to work for them for a few months in person before the virus happened. After that, I was remote for the remainder of the semester and the summer.
Description of internship: Since there were only about 10 employees at the company, plus me and three other interns, we all worked on things together rather than in separate teams. We designed, manufactured, and assembled large solar-powered water distillation units that can distill water up to around 30% salinity (ocean water is about 3.5%). This water mostly comes from fracking run-off or various types of farm run-off. The more day-to-day work was monitoring one of the units here in Pennsylvania and troubleshooting/fixing problems that occurred, as these units are fairly new designs and ever changing. I worked 20 hours a week in person during the semester and the same remotely during the summer.
The goal of the distillation units are to remove the salt completely from the water so that it can be recycled and used for other purposes. The original overall goal was to provide mobile, clean water distillation units to disaster relief areas to provide drinking water for those in need. However, it has changed over time to meet
demand in the areas that I described before (fracking etc.)
How it could have been different if not remote: Being remote obviously hindered my ability to interact with all of the other workers at the company, as well as removed my ability to work hands on with the units and in the shop. I was also going to go full-time during the summer, instead of the 20 hour weeks that I was working during the semester, but there simply wasn't enough online work to be done for me to work full time.
How did this internship shape your next move: This experience gave me a ton of in-person experience that a lot of other candidates in my grade might not have gotten due to COVID19, which makes me a much more appealing candidate for companies next year. I am actually still currently working at this company during this semester, but additionally will begin applying to other companies to try to capitalize on my advantage.