Tartan Careers - Kendra Wong
Sport: Women's Basketball
Class Year 20-21: Freshman
Major: Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
Internship Year, Title, and Company
Summer 2020, Intern, Stanford Children's Motion Analysis and Sports Performace Laboratory
Application process: It was an informal application process where I just reached out to the head of the lab through email, filled out a few short questions, sent my resume, and then we scheduled an interview. From there, I just had to complete the Stanford Volunteering onboarding process because it is an informal internship through Stanford Volunteering.
Why did this internship interest you: I was first interested in this internship because I was curious about biomechanical engineering, especially in the context of athletic performance. I became interested in how the human body works through physical therapy for my own chronic knee injuries, so this internship was a great opportunity to learn more. I also wanted to be a subject in their trials to collect healthy data that they use to compare healthy athletes with athletes who have sustained ACL injuries.
How did you complete the internship - remotely or on-site: I have been working in person because all of the software and equipment is in the lab.
Description of internship: I help the lab collect data from motion analysis trials from patients that come in the lab. Then, I use ViconNexus to process the data, marking contact with force plates, footstrikes, and filling gaps in the model of the athlete. I have also been learning how to use MATLAB to retrieve the correct data from Vicon and organize it into spreadsheets for the patient reports. I will also be working on small projects such as writing the code to calculate vertical jump height from force plate data. I took off time for school basketball season, but other than that, I have only been working once or twice a week for about 3 hours each day. I am the only intern working currently, but in past summers, there have been one or two other interns. However, we all worked fairly independently to process the data. Overall, it has been a great experience seeing both the clinical and research sides of the lab.
How did this internship shape your next move: I am still interning at the lab and I plan to until I leave for school for the spring semester. I am not actively looking for other internships or full-time jobs, but I have built great relationships with everyone at the lab.