Mahmoud Ashraf Hassan Wagih Mohamed MEng Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Internship at University of Southampton Malaysia

My internship allowed me to work on industrial/research projects where I could use my skills to help solve real-life challenges.

Why did you choose to do an internship?

I chose to do an internship as it allowed me to work on industrial/research projects where I could use my skills to help solve real-life challenges and enhance my learning experience. It also provided me with the opportunity to try different specialisations which may not be entirely covered by my course.

Which company did you choose?

I chose to do my internship at the University of Southampton Malaysia (UoSM) as a Research Assistant in Radio Frequency (RF) Engineering, working on a project supervised by Dr Mihai Rotaru.

What did the work involve?

My work was based on an industrial project, from Intel, to analyse and characterise a novel transmission line structure for future generation high speed USB. My work involved both simulation, using commercial tools, of different structures as well as research to help produce design aid equations for hardware engineers.

I also utilized multiple numerical analysis techniques such as curve fitting, in MATLAB, and supervised machine learning, in Python, to analyse the data sets obtained from simulation. Finally, I produced documentation for the findings which contributed to a conference paper for the IEEE Electronics Packaging Technology Conference, Singapore 2017.

What did you learn from your internship?

The main skill I acquired through my internship was learning different techniques and adapting to new tools to solve a given problem in a short time frame. I also improved my skills in analogue and RF electronics which is not normally included in my course.

How did it benefit your degree studies?

My internship directly affected my third-year individual project, as I applied the skills I acquired by using the same tools and underlying theory to design a bespoke antenna module for flexible wearable circuits.

Did it change your ideas about what you would do in the future?

Prior to undertaking my internship, I had very limited experience of RF electronics and analogue circuits design. Having gained experience in that field, it is highly likely that I may seek a graduate position in the same field.