ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For the second consecutive summer, bright, inquisitive young minds will join Sandia National Laboratories’ Microsystems Engineering, Science and Applications Complex through the Student Intern Group for Microelectronics Advancement, known as the SIGMA institute.
Last summer, the SIGMA institute provided 12 undergraduate and graduate students with hands-on experiences ranging from cutting-edge research fields such as brain-inspired computing, to microelectromechanical production systems and photonics devices. The institute also offered mentorship, tours of Sandia research facilities, professional development seminars and opportunities for participants to showcase research at the end of the summer. This summer the institute is hosting 21 interns.
Launched in response to the 2022 Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors act, the SIGMA institute addresses a growing national demand for microelectronics talent. While the CHIPS Act spurred interest in redeveloping an onshore semiconductor industry, it also intensified competition for scientists, engineers and technicians, said Alan Mitchell, a manager with Sandia’s MESA workforce development team who recently retired. To meet that challenge, a volunteer team of Sandia managers and researchers spearheaded the SIGMA institute and are collaborating with Arizona State University’s Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub, Mitchell said.
“The government needs highly trained microelectronics experts that understand the industry, the technology and capabilities,” Mitchell said. “Our focus is on creating a pipeline of interns who experience the value of national service and national security work. By showing students there are really cool jobs at Sandia, the hope is that we will have a population of interns that will be interested in longer-term careers at the Labs and other government agencies.”
Although MESA has hosted interns for decades, SIGMA’s expanded recruiting efforts have attracted even more top talent, Mitchell said. The institute also partners with Sandia’s Securing Top Academic Research and Talent program to reach untapped groups of U.S. citizens. Attracting students capable of obtaining security clearances is vital to MESA’s mission of developing and producing trusted microelectronics for critical national security systems.
Experience, mentorship and tours
Through SIGMA, interns gain hands-on research experience in growing areas of microelectronics, including design and testing, fabrication engineering and packaging — fields critical to national security.
Working alongside Sandia’s microelectronics experts on their research projects, interns gain experience in tasks ranging from writing computer code and running scripts to testing devices and assembling circuit boards, Mitchell said.
Robin Jacobs-Gedrim, an electronic device engineer at MESA, mentored two undergraduates last summer: Melvin Witten from Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University and Jacob Martinez-Marez from New Mexico State University. Both worked on brain-inspired devices that mimic the way neurons move ions to potentially process information more efficiently than traditional chips. One intern studied how temperature affected a device’s ability to “remember” its programmed resistance, while the other used computer modeling to better understand the device’s physics.
Beyond their research projects, the interns are introduced to the breadth of Sandia’s research with tours of research facilities, including the MESA fabrication center, the National Solar Thermal Test Facility and the Primary Standards Laboratory.
Jacobs-Gedrim also formalized a professional development series for interns he had piloted within his department, expanding it into a structured program for all SIGMA interns featuring guest lecturers from across the MESA complex.
“There are a lot of things that are not really taught in school about working in a professional environment or at a national lab,” Jacobs-Gedrim said. “There are a lot of things you can’t really learn anywhere else, but we don’t want students to have to learn these lessons the hard way.”
The seminars cover practical skills such as reading scientific papers, creating effective graphs, applying to graduate school and exploring career paths with individuals from a range of research experiences. Jacobs-Gedrim added several interns followed up with questions related to his “how to apply to graduate school” seminar, including how to ask for letters of recommendation and apply for student grants.
Interns also attend technical seminars, including several sessions hosted by the Quantum Computing Mathematics and Physics program for high school students and teachers. At the end of the summer, SIGMA interns also can participate in events with Sandia’s broader Student Intern Programs and present their research through talks or posters.
Some interns transition into part-time, year-round roles while continuing their education. Additional year-round interns have been hired through SIGMA as well.
Research results and giving back
In addition to building a pipeline of microelectronics experts with experience working on national security topics, Sandia benefits immediately from interns’ research contributions, Mitchell said.
Jacobs-Gedrim agreed, noting that several of his interns over the years have produced enough data for first-author scientific papers, and approximately half have contributed to published results.
“One of the most rewarding parts of my job is getting a student who has studied for a long time to do research to the point where they produce their first original scientific result and seeing them realize ‘hey, this is a new piece of knowledge that no one else has ever found,’” Jacobs-Gedrim said. “It’s so cool to watch. Seeing their eyes light up with that success is more rewarding than almost anything else, including success in my own research.”
But that’s not the only reward Jacobs-Gedrim receives from mentoring.
“What I get out of mentoring is the opportunity to give back and offer others the same experience I had,” Jacobs-Gedrim said. “Seeing what the work was like, having the experience of what people actually did in a research career helped me keep going in college and graduate school.”
Jacobs-Gedrim’s own journey began at Sandia when he interned as a sophomore at Albuquerque’s Valley High School, inspired by Sandia physicist Danelle Tanner who had visited his second grade classroom as part of the Labs’ Science Advisors program.
He is far from the only Sandia employee who got their start as an intern. Several of his colleagues have had similar career trajectories, he said. Even one of the undergraduate interns Jacobs-Gedrim helped mentor when he was a postdoctoral researcher, Steven DiGregorio, now works at the Labs as a postdoctoral researcher himself.