My life as an Intern at DETC

From home…

Once I finished my MSc final project on Collaborative Robots in Turin, I searched for an internship abroad where I could continue working across many research projects.

I came across this opportunity within The Digital Engineering and Test Centre (DETC) through a program called ‘Global Training’, an initiative run by the Basque Government. It was quite a difficult process as I had to pass an English test, and then had numerous interviews with the Basque Government, but luckily I managed to secure a position at DETC, here at the Olympic Park.

… to London

Despite struggling for a little while to find a flat within London in my first week, when I met the DETC team I knew I had made the right choice. In the team I found a young, international and friendly team who made joining a new organisation in a new country such a great experience.

They offered me a lot of support both inside and outside the workplace, whilst giving me hands on insight into the different projects and research that they were delivering.

Jumping in

During, the first week of my internship I was introduced to the projects I would be working on and ended up joining MUSTER, which has been created to enable the development of a Virtually Connected Hybrid Vehicle (VCHV)- an area that hugely excites me!

I was eager to start the work but also felt apprehensive, after all, I was a recent postgraduate and this was going to be my first role outside of the learning environment within such a large project that was a technical challenge considering my background. However, the team put me at ease and my contributions were valued and my “out of the box” ideas were (and still are) encouraged.

No ‘I’ in TEAM

It’s being a great learning experience and the amount of support I’ve been offered has been amazing. Also, the amount of responsibility I have been given is representative of the people within DETC.  The positive working environment encourages me to actively offer up ideas and consistently pushes me to think differently.

Being involved in such key projects from the go, gives me more confidence in my abilities as an engineer.

-This blog was written by Edurne Arteta Solaguren. This blog is for external and internal use. -