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?
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| Nicholas Martinez |
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.
