JohnPaul Mitiguy

Professional Internship with QuantumScape Battery, Inc.

This summer I was fortunate to work as a JTS Sustainability in Action Fellow, working to improve the sustainability of our society at Quantumscape Battery in San Jose, CA, as a mechanical engineer intern. One of the things that drew me to Quantumscape was the commitment to a practical and sustainable future. The EV market has struggled recently with customers hesitant to buy a vehicle with short ranges and long charging times. Quantumscape seeks to bring to large-scale manufacturing of an EV battery which can meet the needs of real-world drivers. This has appealed to me, as it recognizes real concerns of drivers in order to bring about a more decarbonized, sustainable future. This work connects to JTS’s guiding principles and mission through its action-oriented approach to getting better batteries on the road to help build a more sustainable future.

Going into the summer internship, I hoped to discover the challenges facing EV adoption as well as broaden my technical skills in mechanical engineering and design. Over the course of the summer, I sometimes found it difficult to see the bigger picture of sustainability when concerned with the details of tolerances, CAD software, or design equations. However, at several intervals throughout the summer, JTS has helped me zoom out to see the bigger picture of sustainability and my company’s mission to produce a better battery.

Unfortunately, due to internal company timelines out of my control, the hardware I designed could not be installed until after I finished my internship. While this was unfortunate to not see the completion of the project through, I am still very proud of what I was able to produce over the course of the internship. I was able to lead the design, help to manufacture, and prepare to install a complex custom hardware tool for the film separator continuous heat treatment R&D team. Moreover, I am proud of the way I was able to internally present my summer work to both a technical and non-technical audience.

I learned a great deal of technical skills by working on this complex project; however, I also learned many non-technical skills this summer: how to collaborate with others, how to make the most out of meetings, how to interact with managers and team members, communication, etc. Going into the summer, I think I underestimated how important these skills would be on an engineering team. For instance, some of the shortcomings we had were not due to erroneous calculations but gaps in communication. On sustainability, I learned the importance of creating reminders to look at the bigger picture of your work. In school, you have hopes of feeling accomplished for doing meaningful work that betters humanity. On the day to day in a job, my mind was preoccupied with attending meetings, calculating tolerances, and choosing the proper vendor to work with. I found it important to my own sense of meaningful work to find ways (like this Sustainability in Action Fellowship) to root my work back in sustainability and regularly reflect on it.