Two SCI students intern at General Dynamics

General Dynamics has a long-standing relationship with Arizona State University by providing internship opportunities to engineers interested in defense systems or software development. This past summer, the private defense company offered internships to two School of Computing and Informatics (SCI) undergraduates, Andrew Riggs and Nick Karavakis.

Both of the students worked in the engineering department on the Future Combat Systems (FCS) Sensor Data Management (SDM) program. Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) alumnus Raul Monreal, who works as the lead engineer of the FCS SDM program, supervised their work. Riggs’ main responsibilities in the systems engineering lifecycle was to understanding SDM requirements, architecture and design, participate in requirements analysis and design and develop a process, environment and script to post process and validate output from design models. Karavakis focused on fixing software defects as assigned, assisting in the change requests by making use of ClearQuest, Linux, Clearcase and the SDM test driver and participating in the technical peer review process.

Monreal has had a sixteen-year career at General Dynamics. His career there began in 1991 when he interned as a CSE undergraduate intern from ASU. Since that time, he has had a variety of different professional roles as an engineer with the company such as providing technical support in combat fields. Riggs and Karavakis, both SCI seniors, might follow in the footsteps of Monreal.

Both students were offered and accepted positions to extend their internships into the fall 2008 semester. Riggs expresses his gratitude for the experience by saying, “I want to thank General Dynamics for the opportunity to complete my internship and for ASU for giving me the skills that I needed to attain the internship.”