Hello! My name is Jennifer Gutierrez, I am a 2022 Pintern from Montrose, Colorado. This summer I am interning at the University of Utah with the department of Environmental Engineering and the Energy and Geoscience Institute.
I arrived in Salt Lake City, Sunday, June 5th. The next day I headed over to the Energy and Geoscience Institute to begin filling out the necessary paperwork. I met a lovely woman named Carol Smith who assisted me greatly by driving me to HR and guiding me with the process. After filling out the paperwork we came back to the building, and I met Professor Brian McPherson who oversees everything. He talked about the team’s overall project having to do with carbon sequestration, and how I would soon be presented with a great deal of knowledge about every individual’s project. The rest of the team showed up and surely I was presented with the most information I have ever received in two hours. These individuals were incredibly intelligent and each of their roles brought something great to the team’s overall project with the carbon sequestration. After the presentation, I was told to begin some research on helium because there is a national shortage, and I did that for the rest of that working day.
Tuesday, June 7th: Today is my first day at the U campus it is beautiful; the mountains greatly remind me of the mountains back home. I work at the Civil and Materials Engineering building under my advisor Ting Xiao. The project I am currently working on has to do with methane detection. So, today I began researching methane. This is different from any kind of research that I have done before; all of the information is entirely new to me and I’m excited to continue building my knowledge on methane. I also got to enter “the cave” and get the Picarro machine up and running with a colleague and the assistance of another advisor named Kevin. The Picarro machine allows gases to be monitored in seconds at the parts per billion level. We were also given a presentation assignment on different types of sensors that we will present the following week to our advisor. 
Wednesday & Thursday I got to meet new colleagues named Zohar and Marie. We all continued researching methane, specifically methane sensors. Our research on sensors will allow us to choose the best one for our project. We also kept an eye out for the Picarro machine that was inside the cave while we worked. It was interesting to see the CO2 levels rise with our breathing. The cave was full of other fascinating materials that we get to utilize to gain more knowledge. There are many Arduino kits that we are allowed to mess with, and throughout our research, I have realized that breadboarding is a very useful skill to have because many methane sensors can be built with the Arduino kits. I am slightly familiar with breadboarding because of my Digital Electronics class, so being able to expand my breadboarding skills will be advantageous for our project.
Friday, June 10th: Today we got to visit Ting and Erick’s labs. Inside Ting’s lab, we were able to see two bench-scale vents that were built by a student named Aaron Greenlaw for his thesis on the quantitive characterization of hyper-local urban greenhouse resources. These vents allowed for direct injection of CO2, which allowed for the direct measurement of the mass of excess CO2 entering the vents. After seeing Ting’s lab we headed to Erick’s lab. There were many rocks inside his lab and he explained a process that was taken that simulated fluids inside of rock in situ. This allowed them to further understand the effects of carbon sequestration. Both Erick’s and Ting’s labs were very compelling.
Bench-scale vents
Homemade bread (challah bread)
Outside of internship Activities: Friday after work I was invited to a dinner party. I got to try many dishes and hear the Hebrew language, I even learned how to say “cheers” in Hebrew. I was very grateful to be invited to this dinner by my friend Zohar and her dad who is a professor in the department that we are working in. Their family and the entire department at the University have been extremely kind to me and I cannot thank them enough. Saturday and Sunday I got to simply relax in my room.
I am beyond excited to continue my internship!
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