Taming the Thunderchicken:
The Sandia Co-op Experience
Fall, 1998
What is Sandia?
Sandia National Laboratory is a Department of Energy facility run by a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. Their main focus is DOE research, with some defense work, and a variety of partnerships with industry. The facility consists of two sites: the Livermore, California one where I worked and a larger one in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
My Job
One of the industries Sandia has a partnership with is the automotive industry. They've teamed with other national labs and Chrysler, Ford, and GM to develop a next-generation car capable of getting 80 miles per gallon. One of the ways to make this happen is to use cast aluminum to make a lighter vehicle. In order to use this material, though, an accurate material model is necessary, which is where my project fit in. As part of the modeling effort, I was charged with studying the behavior of voids, or empty spaces, in the material. This meant conducting 200 separate finite element simulations, along with the additional work to setup, run, and analyze the results of the calculations. At the end of the semester, the work was presented in a technical poster, live presentation, and in a technical paper.
Undergraduate Research Semester
Besides our co-op projects, all the co-ops took part in the Undergraduate Research Semester (URS) program, which included a variety of seminars and field trips. This was one of the more beneficial aspects of the semester, since it gave us a much better idea of what the national labs do and how they fit into the larger picture of the scientific community (and, of course, it was more fun than doing real work). It also gave us a chance to interact with other co-ops and interns from different schools and other national labs. We also went on a lot of field trips, including going to Las Vegas and the Nevada nuclear test sites.
People
The people at the lab and in Livermore in general are pretty friendly. My mentor was really great; he gave me a well-defined project to work on and I was free to work on my own until I decided it was time to seek more expert advice. I shared an office with two other Cornell co-ops and varying numbers of grad students, which made for fairly lively workdays. In addition to the five other Cornellians there were about a dozen other undergrads in the URS program, so we had a good-sized group of people about the same age.
Livermore
The town of Livermore is fairly quiet, but a nice place. Lots of parks, bike lanes on the roads, and the weather is just great. Most of the students working at Sandia and Lawrence Livermore (the other lab in town), lived in Livermore, making for an easy commute. The labs maintain apartments for various visitors, which some people took advantage of, though you can also get month-to-month leases on an apartment or room of your own. Livermore and the entire Bay Area are pretty bike-friendly, which I took advantage of by biking to work every day. You can get around fairly well without a car: there's local buses, which also run to the BART station in the next town, which in turn will get you to San Francisco, Oakland, or wherever else. If you do have a car, however, Monterey, the Pacific coast, Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe are all within reach.
Working for The Man
Working for the government, especially at a national lab, is a pretty unique experience. You get to see a lot of what government research is and where your tax dollars go (into really big computers, for one). You also get to experience the full barrage of bureaucracy first-hand. Countless hours of orientation and politically correct company programs, ethics training, and being browbeaten about "responsible internet use". It does blend into the background after a while, but fact that they trust people with classified information and can't trust them to use their computer appropriately was a bit insulting. The flip side of this atmosphere is that it also gives you access to some of the best facilities, fastest computers, and most cutting-edge research in the world.
School's Out
The co-op experience is supposed to add to a classroom education, but the truth is that it's more of a whole new dimension than an extension of what you learn at Cornell. I had only heard of finite element analysis once before this semester and had barely been exposed to the material mechanics behind my work. MAE 212 was the only class that directly contributed anything useful, though the countless presentations in MAE 225 made presenting my work at the end of the semester a little easier. The most useful thing was having the technical proficiency to pick up Unix and various software packages fairly quickly. Some programming knowledge was also helpful, since it allowed me to automate many tasks.
My co-op has had an impact on my future educational plans. Talking with my mentor, post-doctoral and graduate students, and others at the lab has gotten me thinking much more seriously about pursuing an advanced degree. Being able to discuss things with people who have been out in the workforce for a while, those just entering it, and those still working on degrees really gave the issue another angle beyond what you might get just talking to people in academia.
Odds and Ends
The compensation at Sandia is pretty decent; enough to keep up with higher California prices and still leave you something afterwards. They also pay your travel expenses to and from the site, whether you fly or drive. The one thing they won't pay, though, is any shipping expenses you incur, which starts to add up when you factor in freight and insurance things like bikes, stereos, and TV's. Co-ops are also considered temporary hires, so you get paid by the hour with no paid holidays. The workday is flexible, with the option to work longer days Monday through Thursday and take every Friday or every other Friday off. And something you probably won't find anywhere else: not only can you ride bikes to work, you can ride them at work. The site is pretty big, so they have bikes to help people get around, which makes trekking across the site to fill out unnecessary paperwork a little more fun.
Wrapping Up
All in all, I had a good semester at Sandia and would recommend it as a worthwhile place to consider co-oping. There are some annoyances that come with the territory, but the benefits of the projects and people you get to work with far outweighs them. I'd be glad to answer any further questions; I can be reached via email (wherever I am) at matthew@botos.com.