Summer Interns

Janet S

Janet Sorrells

Program: Biomedical Engineering
Graduating Class: 2017
Company or Institution: Ortho Clinical Diagnostics

This past summer, I was an intern in the Systems Engineering department of Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a relatively large clinical chemistry company located in Greece, New York. Working in Systems Engineering was nice because I got to do a lot of work with cross functional teams, and was able to collaborate with employees of different fields (BME, ECE, MechE, Biochemistry) and different education levels (BS, MS, MBA, PhD). I was one of about 20 summer interns the company hires, and one of three working on the "Mercury" project, which entailed creating an upgrade kit for a line of clinical chemistry analyzers that Ortho currently has on the market. This was actually my second summer at Ortho, and while I worked on the same project, I had slightly different tasks, including: analyzing image and oscilloscope data, creating simulation models, analyzing sensitivity and creating critical to quality parameters, and presenting results. I probably spent about 80% of my time using Matlab, so my advice to other students would be to work on developing skills like that. I've definitely learned a lot about what kind of roles are available with a degree in BME in industry, and how well I fit into an industry environment.