Thursday, February 11, 2016

Students Have Amazing Internship Experiences At Aptima, Inc.

By Vidur Prasad
The Dayton Regional STEM School has a variety of partnerships with companies and universities to give students the opportunity to work in the real world. One company, Aptima, Inc., accepted two students as interns last summer, where students even worked on drone technology!


The Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) has always strived to give students the opportunity to interact with local companies and organizations to gain experience in the professional world and fulfill the slogan, “The Real World Starts Here.” One of these partnerships is with the local defense contractor, Aptima, Inc. Two DRSS students, Keaton Bonds and Vidur Prasad, were given the opportunity to work at Aptima during the summer of 2015 on real world applications to help Aptima, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. 


Keaton Bonds worked on creating a game-like simulation to determine how people can handle working on multiple tasks at the same time. He collaborated with researchers at Aptima to implement software to allow the Air Force to gain a better understanding of how people’s performance, such as drone pilots, is affected when they must complete a multitude of tasks at the same time. Keaton has said that he has enjoyed the experience, and will continue studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan.  

Vidur Prasad collaborated with Aptima to create a system to determine the amount of workload placed on drone pilots by looking at the complexity in video footage. Since high workload can degrade performance, and drone pilots often have to stare at video footage for hours at a time, Vidur created software to estimate the complexity in a video by looking at the number of people, amount of motion, and other features in the video, allowing the Air Force to reduce the workload on pilots in real time. He said, “The main thing that attracted me to DRSS was the opportunity to apply what I learned in class in a real life setting, such as at Aptima.”



DRSS has a graduation requirement that gives all students the opportunity to complete an internship, allowing students to gain experience in the real world. It is this facet of DRSS—that real world experience is baked into the curriculum—that many students find so attractive about the school. In addition, the partnership with companies, such as Aptima, extends further than just internships. In the past, Aptima has sent judges for the DRSS Science Fair, giving students valuable feedback and critique on their projects. Amazing opportunities have come over the past several years, and will follow for the future, because of our partnership with Aptima; the Dayton Regional STEM School would like to thank them for everything that they have done!