Internships are an important way for students to find out how their career can impact the world. Fourth-year chemical and biological engineering student Amanda Mohrlang found her passion for computational modeling through a hands-on research internship at Prieto Battery, helping with groundbreaking energy research.

Engineering Source talked with Mohrlang about her Cogen internship, Prieto Battery, and her advice for other students interested in their own internships.

How did the internship get started, and what was it like?

The Cogen Internship program gives you networking connections to smaller startup companies, ones that might not be able to fully fund an engineering internship. It was also in connection with She’s in Power, an organization based at the CSU Energy Institute that focuses on helping women get access, resources, and confidence to pursue energy research.

They paired me with Prieto Battery, which is the company that I was really interested in and still work at. The company works on three-dimensional, interdigitated battery research, and at the beginning of the summer announced the fastest charging battery in the world. They handed it to me on my first day, which is crazy. I said, “please take it back, this is too important.”

They’re very forward-thinking and it’s a very diverse population of people who work there. Which was amazing for me because the huge part of this internship was just learning about company dynamics.

What was the thing you learned the most about? Did it help solidify your career path or ideas?

It helped me learn how much of a passion I have for computational modeling. Hopefully I can transition into a job at the company working on computational modeling and different engineering projects.

The bulk of my internship over the summer was spent doing cathode optimization, a pretty complicated process of building this perfect material. I spent quite a few weeks at the beginning really figuring out how to do all that. It was a fantastic experience because I learned so many technological pieces, viscosity measurements, particle size measurements, how to use all of the glove boxes, and everything with lithium. I definitely learned a lot about all the safety procedures and how to change all the gas tubes and everything, which I didn’t realize was important until I was looking at some other jobs.

What’s the difference between what you’ve learned in your classes compared to the internship?

Actually the ending of that project was a little unsatisfying to me because I didn’t find the optimization that we were hoping for. I did find out a lot about the current cathode slurry, and I actually got to spend a couple of weeks trying to fix nickel foam. Which is a great thing for me because I was able to practice a lot of problem solving skills that I’ve learned in engineering and know from chemistry and everything, trying to fix a foam that’s broken.

The internship helped me learn that in industry not every project gets fully finished the way you want it to, especially in a research startup. You have to keep going. I would get stuck for a week and I would be working on other things. That was something I hadn’t really experienced in school. So it’s cool to have that really authentic experience, and they really wanted me as an intern to experience some of that and not just have everything handed to me.

Did that change your project or overall focus?

I think the main thing for me was perspective. If you go into every project with tunnel vision, you’re going to miss a lot because that’s not at all what you’re there for. You have to take into account all of the changing variables.

I realized that it wasn’t failure, it was more just a step in the right direction. Even though that project didn’t turn out how I would have wanted it to, it was still the best for the company. Being able to say this project isn’t going anywhere, that we need to go at it from a different angle. It was a skill that I honestly hadn’t had to use very much in school, and so it was definitely good to learn that.

It helped as a stepping stone to the next project, which I think was good for me because I definitely spent a couple of weeks saying, “the thing that they want me to do, I can’t do it. It’s not working.” And they’d say, “We don’t know if it works at all. That was kind of the whole goal of figuring out if that’s even a possibility.”

Are you comfortable being on that bleeding edge of technology, where you maybe don’t get an answer?

Honestly, I have mixed feelings. Part of me is really excited about it because we’re learning things that nobody else has figured out. Or they combine things in a way that nobody else has, which is very exciting. But it’s also a little bit frustrating because I do like getting answers and solutions and moving forward with something, with a satisfying ending to a project.

It’s definitely a learning curve for me having to change the perception, and expectation, from an ending to a project or a beautiful, nice answer that I can box. The answer might be more visceral and vague. But as long as it’s pushing me in the direction of more projects and more knowledge in that area, that’s what I want.

What advice would you give to other students interested in internships?

Definitely go for it. Doing things as an intern, while you’re still learning and it’s more low key, there’s a little bit less expectations. People understand this is new for you. They want to give you advice, and they want to answer your questions.

I think having at least one internship, maybe two if you can, helps because you can try a larger company or a smaller company. I learned that they’re very different. The company, community, and the culture is honestly way more important than I thought.

And that’s completely flipped my entire job search on its head. It’s nice because now I know better the things that are important to me and my career. So I can make a more educated, thoughtful decision about where I want to work or what I want to do.

Odds are too that an internship will probably want to keep you on because you’re already in there learning. Prieto Battery asked me to stay on for the fall, so I got to continue a different version of my projects and transition to a paid position.

Which surprised me because I was kind of expecting the internship to be a summer thing. I’m still doing it and still loving it.