If STEM careers offer Hawaii students a path to the future, then four interns are well on their way, thanks to the Akamai Workforce Initiative and the Subaru Telescope staff.
For nearly two decades, the Akamai Workforce Initiative has helped college students from Hawaii complete real-life science or technology projects in a professional setting during an eight-week summer internship program. The Subaru Telescope staff has participated in this program since 2005, mentoring more than 30 students who each worked on a project that made a direct contribution to the organization. This summer, Subaru Telescope was fortunate to have four stellar interns from Hawaii: Christopher Chock and Katie Stevens currently attend Gonzaga University, Jenny Brown attends Kapiolani Community College, and Michael Aquino is at Honolulu Community College.
“STEM careers are tough, and I think what this does is give students an opportunity to see a real-world application of what they are learning in school and maybe gives them a chance to come back to Hawaii after college and get a job,” says Subaru Telescope software engineer Russell Kackley, who has been a mentor for AWI for seven years.
The goals of the Akamai program are to address the technical workforce needs in Hawaii and advance students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers. Students spend their internship at an observatory or in an industry setting where they complete a project under the guidance of a mentor. Past projects at Subaru Telescope designed by scientists and technical staff included software improvements, power distribution units and equipment monitors.
“Engineers and scientists here write project proposals and we send them to AWI staff, and they try to match the skill set to the intern,” explains Kackley. “It’s meant to be meaningful work. It’s not just sorting screws.”
This year’s interns worked on important projects proposed by several Subaru Telescope departments. Michael Aquino, a Honolulu Community College student majoring in computer security network technology worked on upgrading the GEN2 Observation Control System Network to achieve higher network speeds, and also to provide a fail-over to prevent server interruption and data loss with his mentor Kiaina Schubert, Computer Data Management division chief.
“The expectation was to really just to have a prototype to install at the base facility so we could see how it works,” says Schubert. “That was very successful so we put it into a critical environment at our summit. Michael was able to configure it and test it and it’s ready to go. His leg work was huge for us. More than half the work is done.”
“The most challenging aspect of this internship was the learning curve,” says Katie Stevens, who was Kackley’s intern this year. Stevens is a student at Gonzaga University studying computer science. She spent her internship working on a software upgrade for the Subaru Telescope system simulator. “This was big software that required me to learn it first before I could add my own code. It was great to work on a project of this size. How many people can say they got to do actual work on a telescope?”
Jenny Brown, a student at Kapiolani Community College studying natural science and engineering, worked on the setup and analysis of proposed data loggers used in the telemetry system for Subaru Telescope’s Prime Focus Spectrograph, a powerful new instrument that will start working next year. Christopher Chock, a Gonzaga University student majoring in electrical engineering with a minor in physics, built and deployed a highly sensitive video camera system for astronomical observations on Mauna Loa that will serve as both a live-stream and will transfer uncompressed raw data in high-resolution for analysis.
For more details on the Akamai Workforce Initiative, visit akamaihawaii.org.