interviews

tell us about your solar panel project

• personal project for a family member’s roof

• they wanted to determine if it was cost-effective to invest in solar panels

• I took measurements around the house to obtain a rough estimate of the area of the roof and used google maps to obtain a picture of the actual roof to determine exactly where the best location would be to place solar panels

• next, i calculated the amount of power generated everyday using solar intensity equations that I learned from physics and also looked up online. calculated the panel efficiency, and the amount of money she would be possibly saving when compared to her electricity rate

Why do you want to work at Marathon Petroleum company?

• Justin: he was talking about how he was working with high voltages and power distribution

• describing how he works both in the office and out of the field, which sounds super exciting.

• I also researched that this job listing is specifically for an electrical engineer intern working in a refinery, which would mean I would be working with chemical engineers.

• I am very excited about working with people from different engineering backgrounds and to learn how different subsections of engineers work together.

Tell us a time you had to analyze data or information and make a recommendation?

• Situation: My family member reached out to me to get a recommendation on if it would be financially viable to finance solar panels

• Task: During my solar panel project, I used the PVWatt tool to calculate and collect data of various parameters such as the total and average power generation of a 4-kW DC system, the DC capacity factor, tilt, system losses, and compared these values to my family member’s total annual power consumption and her residential electricity rate.

• Action: I made a rough estimate of her average monthly payments for the solar panels, battery, installation, APR, and state tax credits by asking for free quotes from the surrounding solar panel business in her area.

• Result: After comparing the monthly cost of the solar panels to her monthly electricity bill, I recommended her to avoid installing solar panels since it would be an increase in cost compared to her current electricity bill.

Tell us about a situation where I found a serious error and how you were able to correct it.

• Situation: I currently work in the STEAM-i lab here at CSULB, which is funded by the university.

• Task: A couple months ago, my co-worker and I were assigned a task to manufacture a silicon substrate at the UCLA nanolab cleanroom facility. Communication was a bit difficult between us and our professor, so we were a bit confused on how we were to fabricate the substrate and which steps we needed to take. For example, we thought we needed to etch the oxide layer off of our substrate for the first step.

• Action: However, after consulting with the engineers at the Nanolab, we were able to find documentation on the substrate from the previous team that instructed us that there was no need to etch off the oxide layer because there was actually no oxide layer to begin with.

• Result: I believe that without asking the UCLA Nanolab staff questions and reviewing the notes from the previous team, we would have made a serious mistake in the fabrication of our substrate, which would lead to serious delays in our experiment and research.

Tell us a situation where you had to motivate yourself to complete a task/assignment you did not want to do and what was the result?

• Situation: Last semester, I was in a class for my circuits lab and my professor was, frankly, a terrible professor.

• Task: He was extremely unwilling to help with our experiments and would not give us any helpful answers or advice if we asked him, which was extremely disappointing and led to my lab team and partners to become extremely unmotivated to do any of the assigned lab experiments, which our grades were dependent on. As a student, I believe it is very difficult to be motivated in learning if your teacher/instructor is not motivated or interested in the material they are teaching.

• Action: However, with the help of junior and senior students at the IEEE club, I was able to ask them questions about my assignments and perform the experiments with their help.

• Result: I believe that their passion for electrical engineering and dedication to helping their underclassmen helped motivate me to complete my assignments in that class.

Tell us a time you and your co-worker disagreed on a solution and how did you move past it?

• Situation: I actually had a lab partner from the same class where I had an issue with the professor from last semester that I was not happy with.

• Task: We were lab partners for the first lab assignment only due to them not wanting to be involved at all in the prelab, experimentation set up, data acquisition, or lab write-up activities. I was basically doing the entire first experiment all by myself, including all the calculations and writing. In addition to having an unmotivated professor, it is also extremely difficult and unmotivating as a student to complete a group assignment with a partner who is completely disinterested in the assignment.

• Action: After this person failed to contribute anything towards this assignment, I immediately informed the professor and lab partner that I would be looking for a new group.

• Result: I was lucky to find two amazing lab partners who were passionate about learning and intellectually curious, and I was not alone in the group assignments anymore.

Tell me a time you had to present information that you did not know

• Situation: A couple years ago when I was a private tutor, I was tutoring a student in precalculus, and they had asked me about the basics of matrix manipulation, specifically matrix multiplication.

• Task: It had been a good amount of time since I had reviewed matrix manipulation, so I had literally no idea how to solve the problem that was being asked.

• Action: Instead of telling the student that I had no idea, I had asked them to try to approach the problem without any knowledge and to basically make an educated guess. During that time, I used my laptop to review matrix multiplication and remembered a good amount.

• Result: After the student went through the problem by themselves without my help, I was able to explain how to solve the problem, step-by-step, as well as showing them resources online if they were confused from my explanation.

What have you done differently from your peers, what makes you stand out, and how do you do things differently and why?

• Situation: Something that I believe makes me stand out from my peers is that I try to explore why the physical world works the way it does. I often watch youtube videos that explain the physical phenomena of the material I am currently studying.

• Task: For example, I am currently learning about NMOS and PMOS transitioners and my professor was explaining how the pinch off region in the NMOS and PMOS can lead to current saturation. However, she did not go into detail of why this phenomena occurs.

• Action: Therefore, I searched up for different explanations on youtube, which helped me understand why the current becomes saturated.

• Result: As an engineering student, I feel the need to understand why the physical world works, not just how, which is what I believe most of my peers think. I believe that if I cannot find a logical explanation for something, I cannot actually learn or memorize, which is why I love physics so much. Even though I do like math, physics is much more exciting to me because it basically explains why our physical world works in the way it works, compared to math, which is extremely theoretical and something you are expected to just “accept”.

steam-i

Sustainable Thermal Energies using Advanced Materials and Imaging

Why did you choose electrical engineering and career plans?

Conservative company:

• I love problem solving and circuit analysis/designing.. I am also passionate about math, physics, and hard sciences.

• After graduating, I really want to start a career in the power and utilities industry, which is mainly why I am concentrating in power.

• I also plan to take my FE exam in my senior year because I know that many of the power distribution companies are looking for an FE-certified electrical engineer.