Engineering Major Is Drawn to the Ocean – and the Gliders Below the Surface

Mason Diaz, who has worked with scientists from the Rutgers Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, lands an internship at Teledyne Webb Research

Mason Diaz, a sophomore attending the School of Engineering at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, will spend part of his spring and summer interning for a company that makes autonomous underwater robots known as gliders.

It is the latest opportunity for Diaz that merges his major - mechanical engineering - with marine science. The aspiring ocean engineer credits a couple of high school classes and a visit from a Rutgers dean for sparking his interests in engineering and ocean research.

Diaz said ocean engineering is "a pretty broad subject just because some people work on coastal things like renewable energy or they might work on oil rigs and stuff."

He added, "I definitely want to get involved in underwater vehicles. So that might be just autonomous robots, maybe remote-controlled robots or just submarines - anything that drives in the water basically. That's what I'm going for."

Mason Diaz said a physics class during his junior year at Carteret High School triggered his interest in experiments, engineering and gliders

Last year, Diaz's analytical abilities caught the attention of Joe Gradone, a Rutgers oceanographer who offered the undergraduate a summer internship analyzing glider data from Teledyne Webb Research, a division of Teledyne Technologies Inc. that designs gliders and scientific instruments for oceanographic research and monitoring.

Diaz's work so impressed Teledyne's engineering team that the company has offered the 19-year-old another internship. Diaz will be a glider intern for Teledyne in Falmouth, Mass., from May to July.

A physics class during his junior year at Carteret High School triggered an interest in conducting experiments, engineering and gliders, said Diaz, adding that the underwater vehicles "look fun."

"I'm thinking like Star Wars," he said. "Back in the day, you'd see all those crazy looking ships. It looked so interesting to me."

The Carteret, N.J., resident learned about ocean gliders - autonomous vehicles that collect scientific data and use a buoyancy-driven propulsion system to glide under the ocean's surface for thousands of miles and months at a time - while taking a marine biology class during his senior year at high school.

"It was really cool seeing just how the mechanisms work, how they were created and how we can improve upon them," said Diaz, a member of RU Autonomous, a student engineering club at Rutgers that designs and builds aerial drones for competition. "I was just really interested to see how that propulsion worked underwater, which is what got me interested in that marine science side."

While applying for college, Diaz said he heard about the mechanical engineering program at Rutgers-New Brunswick. Then he met Arron Rodriguez, an assistant dean of student outreach and engagement at the School of Engineering who visited his high school.

He shared some legitimate new findings on the performance of the vehicle with Teledyne that they wouldn't have known otherwise and has improved their ability to develop and pilot the vehicle in this mission.

Joe Gradone

Rutgers oceanographer and assistant research professor

"I learned a lot about what they had for mechanical engineering," Diaz said. "I think that definitely swayed my position because that was the only college that I had actually gotten the opportunity to go check out before I made my decision. That definitely played a big factor in it."

Diaz seized another opportunity to fuel his engineering and ocean research interests with the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, part of the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

During the spring semester of his freshman year, Diaz enrolled in an elective course, "Topics in Marine Science," cotaught by Gradone, an assistant research professor with the department. Students were divided into groups, and Diaz was part of the team charged with analyzing glider data from the Sentinel Mission, a collaboration between the Rutgers University Center for Ocean Observing Leadership (RUCOOL) and Teledyne Webb Research.

"Mason was super engaged and always really excited about the data we were working on," said Gradone, who also is a faculty member of RUCOOL.

Gradone added he was so impressed with Diaz's work that he asked the student to be an RUCOOL intern to do a more focused dive into the dataset. Under Gradone's supervision, Diaz spent 10 weeks over the summer analyzing glider data and providing weekly updates to the engineering team at Teledyne.

Working with a team of undergraduates, Diaz said most of his work focused on analyzing and visualizing testing data from three ocean gliders, including identifying trends in battery usage and speed "that helped us estimate travel time and power consumption throughout the first leg of the Redwing's journey."

Diaz's involvement in the mission included being at the launch of the glider Redwing, which mission team members hope will be the first underwater robot to circumnavigate the world.

Professor Joe Gradone and student Mason Diaz joined Teledyne employees for the launch of the glider Redwing in Woods Hole, Mass., on Oct. 10. From left: Shea Quinn (product line manager), Gradone, Diaz, Cordielyn Goodrich (technical support and field operations manager) and Sal Fricano (field applications engineer).

Gradone said Diaz's independence and natural curiosity proved especially helpful.

"He shared some legitimate new findings on the performance of the vehicle with Teledyne that they wouldn't have known otherwise and has improved their ability to develop and pilot the vehicle in this mission," Gradone said. "There wasn't a huge learning curve for him to even get started. He just was able to dive right in - and he really owned the project."

Diaz, who retook the "Topics in Marine Science" elective course in the fall semester, said his work on the mission has helped him forge connections in fields "that I otherwise might not have had access to as an engineering major" and credited Gradone for providing mentorship.

"At least for mechanical engineering majors, a lot of people focus on internships, externships, all that stuff," Diaz said. "But I think research is another great way, especially to branch out from what you might typically be doing in your major."

He added, "I've definitely gained a better understanding of how to communicate with a lot of people."

Diaz said engineering students "sometimes might get caught up in just taking their courses, passing the classes, graduating," but delving into different academic waters can reap rewards.

"If you have that availability, it's definitely worth it to take at least one class outside of your major that you might be interested in," Diaz said. "You never know where it could lead.

"I mean, that's what happened for me."

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