Student Perspective: My internship experience at CFMS

Janvi is a logical, hardworking and committed student with a passion for data and information.

“The internship at CFMS led me to make my decision to gain more practical experience in data science. My next step is to find a good opportunity in this field and gain experience”, says Janvi.

What have you enjoyed most about your internship/placement at CFMS?

CFMS gave me the opportunity to start my career as a data scientist and gain immense knowledge. I was blessed to have such a cooperative team although we spent most of the time working remotely due to lockdown. Importantly, I enjoyed exploring a variety of different projects that I undertook.

Tell us about some of the projects you have got stuck into…

There are several projects I was involved in;

Firstly, I worked on creating insightful visualizations that helped to understand the market for small electric/hybrid aircraft based on the CO2 emission per passenger.

Secondly, I developed an end-to-end project involving time series forecasting. I used a supervised learning approach, handling large datasets and exploring numerous software libraries like python’s scikit-learn and NVIDIA’s rapids-ai library.

Lastly, I worked on anomaly detection problems using IoT sensor data with focus on feature engineering techniques and decision tree based machine learning methods.

How has your internship/placement at CFMS helped to shape your future career?

Within the course of my placement, I have significantly improved my technical skills and the variety of the projects within the company helped me build immense knowledge in machine learning and deep learning algorithms to solve real world problems.

What’s next for Janvi?

I am now actively looking for opportunities in the field of data science where I can further develop my technical knowledge and enhance my capabilities within the field.

Studying for an Integrated Masters in Mathematics at the University of Bath, Charlotte wanted to do something in the field of mathematical modelling and/or simulation.

What have you enjoyed most about your internship/placement at CFMS?

I enjoy problem solving and applying my knowledge to real world situations. This placement offers a great balance between industry experience and research. Having a research project, as well as helping with company needs has provided a wide range of tasks so my day is varied.

Tell us about some of the projects you have got stuck into…

My main project this year has focused on NDT (non destructive testing) using ultrasound. I have been determining the size of cracks and corrosion profiles in materials and estimating the uncertainty in this measurement. I then determined how the uncertainty distribution propagates when different functions are applied to this.

Additionally, I’ve been helping to develop some of the company code and reviewing others’ code, which generally helped with parts of my main project.

How has your internship/placement at CFMS helped to shape your future career?Next year at University I am planning to build on the knowledge I have gained this year at CFMS. I have enjoyed the mathematical modelling aspects of my placement year and plan to continue growing my knowledge of computer coding.

What’s next on your plan?

Next year I am returning to university to complete the final year of my Bachelor’s year of my mathematics degree. I am planning to take a mixture of pure and applied mathematics, building on my knowledge of finite element analysis for numerical solutions of PDEs. After this, I am aiming to complete my Masters year. For this, I will be completing a year long project which I am planning to link to the knowledge I have gained during my placement year.

Ben is Studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath with the aim to achieve a masters degree. The degree covers a lot of aspects of engineering; from design and fluid mechanics to numerical methods and modelling techniques.

What have you enjoyed most about your internship/placement at CFMS?

I have most enjoyed developing my technical skills, particularly with regards to coding, modelling and version control software. I believe these will be powerful tools later in my career. Problem solving challenges have always appealed to me, so naturally I find this work very interesting and rewarding. Working within a small company is an experience that I’ve very much enjoyed; right from the beginning I was integrated into the team and felt like I was able to make meaningful contributions.

Tell us about some of the projects you have got stuck into…

The majority of my time at CFMS has been spent on developing an electromagnetic framework in an open source software. This will allow us to model many interactions from eddy current, magnets and solenoids.

Other projects I have worked on this year include a factory layout optimisation, this includes work on the code and the models for the VR demo. Finally, I have also worked on modelling the 3D printing process of a metal substrate. This project was particularly challenging as it requires a lot of physics to be modelled in the simulation due to the complex nature of the process.

How has your internship/placement at CFMS helped to shape your future career?

My experience of coding up to joining CFMS was very limited and non-existent before university. This placement has allowed me to explore coding as a career option, and particularly how it can be applied to engineering. I certainly believe that coding will play a key role in my future career, it’s an especially useful skill to have as a mechanical engineer and I look to use that to my advantage.

What’s next?

I will be heading back to university for the final two years of my degree. I am looking forward to applying all the knowledge and skills that I have acquired during my time at CFMS and implementing them into my studies.

Entering his final year of studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath, this was second placement for Jake at CFMS.

What have you enjoyed most about your internship/placement at CFMS?

Ah, the list is long: Independence of working on projects alone, learning how to code more efficiently, having to learn new theory and skills on the job, opportunities to present work to colleagues, collaborative atmosphere within the office to name …

Tell us about some of the projects you have got stuck into…

During first placement – I worked in Drone modelling and Electric aircraft modelling. Intern starter project required me to model the aerodynamics of 3D drone flight in Python. I created mathematical models in Python to represent the flight profile of an electric aircraft and assess the feasibility of electric aircrafts. This consisted of creating models using blender and unreal engine.

During second placement – I worked on temperature dependent modelling of thermal properties of different materials. This meant I could use the theory of quantum physics to determine material properties from the crystal structure of materials. In more simple terms – Calculating how a material behaves at different temperatures based on the forces between atoms within a material. This is necessary because test data is not always reliable so being able to calculate these parameters mathematically is advantageous.

How has your internship/placement at CFMS helped to shape your future career?

Working on a broad scope of projects has given me many opportunities to move into a variety of different fields of engineering or even software development. CFMS has encouraged me to think in a different way about problems and has improved my approach, which will hopefully help me to solve problems more effectively in the future. CFMS has helped me to be able to explain my work and thought process to others, which is a valuable life skill.

What’s next in Jake’s plans?

Finish the final year of my masters degree. Possibly become a Chartered Engineer? Not 100% sure on my dream career. Definitely more software/technology focussed rather than hands on engineering due to enjoying my experience at CFMS.

If you are interested to know more about placement year opportunities at CFMS, email us at careers@cfms.org.uk.