NAVSEA - Naval Sea Systems Command
08/26/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/26/2026 11:07
SSEP Students Turn Classroom Design into Hands-On Engineering at Carderock
NEWS | Aug. 26, 2026
SSEP Students Turn Classroom Design into Hands-On Engineering at Carderock
By Alisha Tyer, NSWC Carderock Division Public Affairs
WEST BETHESDA, Md. -
Three Florida Institute of Technology students spent their summer at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division chasing a number: 34%. That's how much additional range their destroyer hull design needed to achieve, without modifying the ship's propulsion, by the end of the project.
Brianna Ellis, Zoey Shepard and Collin Morr, rising seniors studying ocean engineering at Florida Tech, came to Carderock through the STEM Student Employment Program (SSEP) to do something rare for undergraduates: take a ship design developed during the academic year, build a physical model and test it in the David Taylor Model Basin.
That broad challenge was intentional. Emilio Domenech Estarellas, a project naval architect in Carderock's Future Concepts and Design Integration Division, helped develop the design problem and mentored the students through the design phase. The effort grew from a partnership between Carderock and Florida Tech intended to align university coursework with the skills, tools and processes that the warfare center division uses.
When it came to solving the design problem, however, mentors expected the students to lead.
"I would actually say that they had over 80% ownership," Estarellas said, later estimating their ownership at 85% to 90%. "All basic assumptions were made by them and validated by them."
The team's solution included lengthening the hull to accommodate additional fuel and designing appendages, including a bulbous bow and stern flap, to improve performance. Each student assumed responsibility for different aspects of the effort, from model design and computational analysis to test planning and data analysis.
When the students arrived at Carderock in May, their project moved from design to validation. Kendall Moore, a test engineer and mechanical designer in the Resistance and Powering Branch, mentored the students through the hands-on portion of the project. That included manufacturing the segmented, 3D-printed model, preparing the data acquisition system, developing the test plan and preparing for the Test Readiness Review before conducting calm-water resistance testing in the model basin.
For the students, access to Carderock's facilities was only part of what changed. "The biggest thing was using the test facility here," Shepard said. "The Taylor Model Basin is super cool."
Morr pointed to another resource: the engineers working alongside them who helped fill knowledge gaps and navigate difficult topics. Ellis said the experience allowed the team to take the project "10 times further" than they anticipated before arriving at Carderock.
The mentors, however, were careful not to do the work for them.
"We were there to guide them and help them along their path," Moore said. "The students did so much and so much more than I personally thought was possible."
That responsibility helped transform the experience from a summer internship into an introduction to what working as an engineer could actually feel like.
"I kind of felt like from day one when we stepped in here, we definitely had full control over everything we wanted to do," Ellis said. "We felt very respected and seen."
She said the students understood they did not know everything, but tackled problems independently before turning to their mentors for help.
Estarellas saw that independence grow throughout the project. Early on, he said, the students accepted standard explanations of how systems functioned. By the end, they questioned the underlying reasoning behind engineering processes and assumptions.
"It was really incredible to see them just get confidence and ownership over their design problem," he said.
The eight-week effort also challenged the students to learn quickly. Morr learned new modeling software to prepare the hull for 3D printing. Shepard served as test director and learned the processes behind resistance testing and test-plan development. Ellis expanded MATLAB tools to handle prediction, quality assurance and analysis.
For Shepard, who has worked with Carderock through SSEP for nearly two years, the project also offered a glimpse at a possible future.
"This has definitely been my favorite project to work on," she said. "I think it helped me open my eyes to see the possibilities of what I can do here at Carderock when I graduate."
Morr said the internship changed his expectations, too. Previous experience led him toward computer-aided design work, but the summer showed him how much he enjoyed hands-on testing and sparked a greater interest in naval architecture, resistance and powering.
For Ellis, the experience brought clarity.
"This internship has helped me find exactly what I want to do," she said. "I love being part of conceptual design. I love the challenge. I love everything about being able to start from scratch and build something new."
Moore said preparing to mentor the team gave her an opportunity to develop her own experience as a test engineer. Before the students arrived, she worked with Estarellas on preliminary testing that helped prepare for the summer effort and gave her additional experience conducting resistance tests.
By the time the students watched their model travel through the basin, months of design work, new software, fabrication, test preparation and problem-solving had become tangible.
"There were a couple points where we were like, are we even getting this done?" Shepard said. "We really started out knowing very, very little about this whole process."
Seeing the model successfully complete made testing those hours worthwhile. "It was really nice to see all of our hard work and all that knowledge actually pay off in a way we could visually and physically see," Shepard said.
As the students return to Florida Tech, their mentors hope they leave with more than test results. Moore hopes the experience showed them the range of careers available in engineering and that technical work can combine analysis, design and hands-on problem-solving.
Estarellas offered one final lesson: "Always question your assumptions and look for a way to validate those."
For three students who spent the summer turning assumptions on a screen into a model they could test, the lesson was fitting.
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