Zhengqian Jiang, an HPMI researcher and PhD candidate in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (IME), has received an Internship Award from South Big Data Regional Innovation Hub (SouthBDHub) sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Zhengqian is one of six graduate students from universities in the southern U.S. who will spend the summer working on data challenges important to the success of new and growing technology companies thanks to a program called the Southern Startup Internship Program in Data Science (DataStart).

DataStart interns will address a wide range of data-related business problems, including spotting trends in the diversity of people included in clinical trials, developing methods for using sensor data to detect loads on wind turbines, and the challenges of cleansing and standardizing data to extract more knowledge from it.

Jiang will assist Nanotechnology Patronas Group Inc. (NPGroup Inc.) in developing and commercializing a sensor system for wind turbines that can accurately detect loads that go undetected in the models typically used by inflow sensors to estimate load. The new sensor system seeks to increase wind power production and protect expensive wind turbine components. NPGroup Inc. was founded based on a proprietary ITOPress sensor system developed by High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI) at FSU. His faculty advisor, Prof. Hui Wang in FSU-IME, also received a PEPI award from NSF SouthBDHub to help him co-supervise the internship with NanoGroup Inc.

DataStart provides each host company with up to $15,000 to pay for a full-time intern working onsite from approximately June 1 to August 31.

The DataStart program was launched this year by the South Big Data Regional Innovation Hub (South BD Hub), one of four Big Data Hubs funded by the National Science Foundation. The program is supported by a grant from the Computing Community Consortium, which enables innovative, high-impact research in the national computing community.