Case Western Reserve University engineering student Patrick Upton joins the Laboratory as a summer intern.
Patrick Upton
Patrick Upton

When Patrick Upton was a high school student in Wexford, Pa., his chemistry teacher told him about the field of materials science and engineering and encouraged him to give it a try in college. "I looked into the subject more after that and really found the overall topic interesting,” said Upton. “With materials science in mind, I took ENGR 145 (in Fall 2020 at Case Western Reserve University) and got hooked on the subject."

Now a rising junior, Upton is spending the summer digging into his interests in semiconductor processing and manufacturing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, mostly focusing on microfabrication and microplasma sputtering. Every day, he makes samples from the lab’s microplasma sputterer, then takes measurements of the sample to see if it changes through different conditions. He credited his research at CWRU for giving him measurement techniques to use on the materials.