Undergraduate incorporating industrial engineering into NASA lab research
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Industrial Engineering student Jude Gershon set his sights on a corporate job or pursuing a master’s degree when he graduates. However, after talking to a professor and his peers, he decided to pursue a research opportunity as an undergraduate. Now, Gershon is gaining research experience in the NASA MIRO Center for In-Space Manufacturing: Recycling and Regolith Processing at UIC.
“Professor Lin Li talked a lot about how research would incorporate a lot of the concepts that I use in industrial engineering down the road, and it would be a great experience,” said Gershon, who works under the direction of Li in the Sustainable Manufacturing Systems Research Laboratory. “My friends who had been in research said it was a great community thing, and it was cool to work on something that benefits our university and could be published one day.”
Gershon is researching heat transfer and energy consumption to develop a mathematical model to understand how a certain RPM or setting will impact how fast the material comes from the 3D printer in space.
“It’s important because we want to know how long we can expect it to take. In space, time is of the essence. It’s energy consumption, and we want to know which will be the most efficient material or settings,” he said.
He is growing in the laboratory as someone who likes to work independently and is driven to solve problems.
“What I like about research is that it makes you focus on the solo work. You have to be disciplined,” he said. “A lot of the time, you’ll do a lot of research and be looking at articles, and you’ll just feel stuck, asking yourself, ‘How can I not get this formula? How can I not do this?’ But it challenges you to think on your feet and not give up. And it is very self-driven. ”
He also enjoys the interdisciplinary aspect as he is learning about heat transfer, which he normally wouldn’t learn in industrial engineering.
“It’s important to be well-rounded in my field. With the changing job market, you’ll always want more skills,” he said. “Even though it is difficult in a way, it’s helpful to know.
In addition to the internship, he is enjoying the industrial engineering program at UIC.
“Everyone in the program is super nice and dedicated, and all of the professors are great and willing to mentor students,” Gershon said. “I think it was a good choice being in IE because I get the real world with an applied version of statistics in math, which is different than if I had just done mathematics. It introduces a different approach, which is the numbers behind real-world scenarios, and that will be a more important thing in the future.”