2016 WISE Engineering Interns Talk about Their Projects

3/12   in the series WISE Interview Series

This year AIChE sent Austin Wright-Pettibone (University of Washington), Mena-George Basaly (City College of New York), and Tomas Wesley Green (University of Kansas) to Washington for the WISE (Washington Internships for Students in Engineering) program. During the program, the interns research public policy issues and contribute to discussions on how engineers impact society. 

As part of the program, interns present their findings at the AIChE Annual Meeting. This year, Jami Summey-Rice (Univ. of Houston and 2015 WISE intern) sat down with two of the 2016 AIChE interns in addition to Nick D’Angelo, Jr., an ASTM WISE intern. In the video interview above. The interns discuss their topics, which are:

  • Austin: "Driving the Future: Governance Challenges for Biotechnology in the Age of Gene Drive.”
  • Mena-George: “Power Up: Advancing Automobiles Through Energy Storage.”
  • Nick: “An Aging Infrastructure: Policy Recommendations to Modernize Aging Water Distribution Networks to Protect Human Health.”

In a separate interview, we sat down with Tomas Wesley Green to hear about his experience as a WISE intern and about his topic, “Embracing  Our Bioeconomic Future: Engendering Political and Economic Sustainability for the Energy and Chemical Sector of the Bioeconomy.”

The interns’ research was published online in the September 2016 edition of the WISE Journal of Engineering and Public Policy, available at www.wise-intern.org/journal.

You can also watch interviews of the 20152014,  and 2013 interns.

For more information about the AIChE WISE Award, visit http://www.aiche.org/WISEAward. The deadline for 2017 WISE internship applications is Dec. 31, 2016. For details, visit http://www.wise-intern.org.