Internship Grant Recipient Profile: Nicholas Martinez...

by Angela Sun

Apply for the Tufts Career Center Summer Internship Grant! A total of 40 grants will be awarded this year, at a value of $3500 each. Grants will be awarded in the categories of Non-Profit/ Public Sector, AS&E Diversity, Entrepreneurial Leadership, and Innovation in Science & Technology. To help you prepare for your application due March 29, we will be presenting a three-part series featuring last year's internship grant recipients.

Nicholas Martinez is a Mechanical Engineering major from the class of 2014. Last year, Nicholas was awarded an Entrepreneurial Leadership grant to work at Rock Health.

1. Tell me about Rock Health, and what did your internship consist of?

Nicholas Martinez

Rock Health is an incubator company that works with startups specialized in the digital health field. Last summer, the practice was run out of Harvard instead of San Francisco. I enjoyed the internship because I got to do a lot of different kinds of work. I helped with logistics such as scheduling mentor office hours and meetings, but also got to work with start-ups in product development. I researched what would be the most efficient, cost-efficient, and smallest parts to use in a device, and helped create 3D CAD prototype models. Working alongside HBS and Sloan graduates exposed me to the business side of start-ups.

2. What projects did you get to work on at your internship?

I got to work a little more closely with two teams in particular. The first team is called Neumitra and they are designing a device that you wear on your wrist (it will eventually be embedded into a watch) that monitors your stress levels in real time. One can also link this device up to their phone so that when they get stressed, the phone can respond with a message, music, or suggest a game. It is really cool technology and I was in charge of helping them find individual parts that would be used for the device.

The second team was Podimetrics and they are designing a bathroom floor mat that helps to detect diabetic foot ulcers. Foot ulcers cause thousands of amputations every year yet are highly treatable if diagnosed early. This mat scans the foot while the person brushes their teeth, does their make-up, shaves, etc. and determines if there is a problem area developing. If so, the device sends a red flag to the person’s doctor and the doctor then has them come in for a check-up. I worked with them on some of their design criteria. One of their biggest problems is that they want the mat to be as inconspicuous as possible and thus, the design and layout of the mat is extremely important.

2. How did you secure your internship?

I had a distant family connection to Rock health as one of my mom’s friends had been an advisor there in the past. She knew that I was very interested in opportunities to apply engineering to the healthcare field, so she introduced me to the company. From there I went through a series of interviews, which included two phone interviews and one in person.

3. How did you apply for the Tufts Grant? What do you think made for your successful application?

The application was actually pretty easy for me to write because I was very passionate about the internship and the questions for the application seemed to set me up well for showing this passion. I was interested in Rock Health because I knew that I would gain experience in a lot of different areas working with a lot of different teams. To me this is the goal of an internship in that I was able to obtain a large variety of skills in an area that I knew I wanted to work in.

4. What have you gained from the overall experience?

This experience has confirmed that I do indeed want to get into the healthcare field and help others. I'm excited about this growing field in which a lot of cool new technology will be emerging. Also, from my experience, I have given more thought to getting an MBA at some point later in my career. From watching the startups, I have realized how valuable a person with both technical knowledge and business knowledge is.

5. Do you have any advice for students applying for the grant/ starting internships?

If I were to give advice to someone applying for the grant, I would just say that being passionate about the internship will give you the best chance of getting it because it will show in your application

The application for the internship grant can be found here.

Read More

TIP Spotlight: Briana Bouchard E14

Throughout the summer, we will be featuring the stories of current Tufts students. You'll find internships like these (and many more!) in the Tufts Internship Profile (TIP) Book, coming this fall. The TIP Book is a collection of internship descriptions and advice provided by Tufts students for Tufts students. Watch your Career Center eNews for more information. 

Name: Briana Bouchard
Class Year: 2014
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Hometown: Madbury, NH
Internship organization: Allergan, Medford, MA
Internship title: R&D Engineering Intern

1. Describe your internship organization. 
Globally, Allergan is a multi-specialty health care company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceuticals, biologics, and medical devices.

 2. Describe your internship responsibilities.
Working in Research and Development, my responsibilities range greatly from day to day. I could be writing a study report one day and be preparing test samples the next day. For the most part, I am providing any support I can to the textile engineers in my department. Sometimes they are looking for specific support with a mechanical engineering related task and other times they are looking for general support with an upcoming project. These tasks can be as simple as creating graphs of data in excel and can get as complicated as creating a surgical model to show how to use our product. The best part about it is that not every project has a foreseeable outcome or solution. We spend a lot of time discussing and thinking outside of the box.

3. What has led you to pursue this type of work? 
I’ve always been interested in the medical field, but I wasn’t sure that medical school was the right fit for me. In the last couple of years, I’ve decided that I want to apply my mechanical engineering degree to some sort of medical research. After working at Biogen Idec, a pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, MA, I realized that I wanted to go into the medical device industry. I saw how these devices could improve patient care and allow doctors to offer treatments in new and more effective ways. In looking for summer internships, I applied to many medical device companies and several more traditional mechanical engineering internships. When the opportunity at Allergan presented itself, I knew that the internship was exactly what I was looking for. It was the perfect balance between mechanical engineering and medical research.

4. Describe one highlight of your internship experience thus far? 
One of the first major projects I contributed to was a breast reconstruction model that our marketing team could use to show surgeons how our product works. We sent the model out for use at a conference and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. It was an amazing experience to know that I had made significant contributions to a model that would allow surgeons to understand the benefits of our product.

5. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to other interns?
I think that in any internship experience it is crucial to broaden your scope of learning by offering to take on projects that aren’t necessarily part of your job description. Learning what other people do in the organization is important and you could find something that you didn’t know existed or that you are more interested in.

Read More