Farshad Fahimi

Company: VIASYS Healthcare (currently Cardinal Health)
Dates: May 2006 - January 2007
Position Title: Quality Assurance Intern
Fields: Software, EEG, EMG, Audiology
Internship or Co-op: Co-op
Location: Fitchburg, WI
Began: After junior year

How I earned the position
An interview through ECS allowed me to interact with some QA engineers from VIASYS in the spring. After the interview, a tour was given of their facility with introductions to various software and hardware that their co-ops may be working on.

Project Description
My main focus during the co-op was to ensure customer satisfaction through a quality product. It was my responsibility to look for errors, bugs, or defects seen through compatibility testing and testing procedures recieved by the software or electrical engineers. The main software I worked on was Audera, an application aimed at analyzing hearing complications in infants.

How I liked the job
Being a QA intern led to many repetitive tasks that seemed to consume much of my time on some days.  Since my work relied on others fixing the bugs I found, there would be days that it would be difficult to find work.  I'm not completely interested in doing QA over the long-term but VIASYS had a great amount of flexibility and is so close to campus.  I was actually able to do a semester of biomedical design while working 40 hour weeks.  The atmosphere and my co-workers are very knowledgeable and make working at VIASYS very interesting.  I learned a great deal about computers, hospital implementation of software, and circuits.  In addition, we were sent to UW-hospital to check up on the status of VIASYS' EEG medical carts and get feedback for further improvement.  As a QA intern, I was not expecting to have much responsibility but was very glad that many individuals demanded a lot from me and appreciated my efforts.

Why I sought the position
Since I am extremely interested in working for the biomedical industry and not medical school, VIASYS was a great look into what its like to work in an engineering atmosphere everyday. I wanted to get some real-world engineering experience outside of working on design teams for school. Also, I really wanted to verify whether or not I wanted to seek a career in QA, which I do not. In addition, I now feel strongly toward being a design engineer and possibly coming back to work for VIASYS.