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SAMANTHA DENNLER

Internship Field: Power Engineering, Biofuels

Major: Chemical Engineering

Host: Fraunhofer-Institut für Windenergie und Energiesystemtechnik (IWES)

Location: Bad Hersfeld

Duration: 3 months in summer of 2015

 

Description: "My work included completely designing and implementing an experimental plan in attempt to flexibilize biogas production. This entailed reading large amounts of biofuel literature (written both in English and German); designing the experimental plan and conveying this plan with supervisors; preparing and cleaning the required equipment; collecting materials; and the daily duties of carrying out the experiment (measuring feed, feeding, taking samples, analyzing data, etc.). At the conclusion of my internship, I formatted many days’ worth of data and compiled a report with my findings."

Comments: "I believe the internship was extremely worthwhile. Not only did I gain skills in the workforce and a field I am passionate about, but I also gained invaluable personal skills. In the workforce, I became much better at adapting to situations and even gained some mechanical experience. The most rewarding part of my internship was gaining experience in adapting to situations. At the beginning, it would really bother me when things did not go according to plans. However, work (and life) rarely goes exactly as planned and it is crucial to be able to adjust and make the most of any situation. I now approach my work in a much calmer and open-minded manner. In addition, I refined my conversational German language skills and began to learn technical German vocabulary. I also improved my comprehension of written documents in the German language. However, the majority of my internship was in English."

For further information, please write to sdennler@stanford.edu

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