Research and Projects — Michael Parrish Portfolio

During the summer of 2019, as an intern, I had the opportunity to work on an exciting research project at Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. I worked under Dr. Ronnie Shepherd’s supervision. He is one of the country’s top astrophysicists and is a senior experimental physicist at Livermore Lab where he manages the High Energy Density Physics section. He asked me to work with him to modify one of the Laboratory’s streak cameras. A streak camera is an instrument that measures the variation of pules of light with time. My job was to develop a spectrometer that would become a part of the streak camera itself. I programmed a spectrometer (using Python) and had it perform the necessary Bragg’s calculations. I was pleased to learn that my work was used by the laboratory for further experiments after my internship ended. Also, after the internship, I was invited to compete in the 2019 National Society of Black Physicists Undergraduate Conference in Rhode Island. I presented my Lawrence Livermore Lab research and was awarded the top prize in my category.

During the summer of 2020, I had the opportunity to work at ExxonMobil as an Information Technology Intern. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this was a virtual experience. I worked with 3 other interns to build critical software for Exxon Mobil’s mammoth iRMS reservoir simulation application. This simulation application is the principal software the corporation relies upon to analyze geothermic data to make important oil production and other decisions. Our group's task was to refine the application’s settings features to allow for better graphical representations of data. Specifically, we worked to improve the application’s ability to (a.) show comparisons of data among different units of measurement and (b.) allow for greater customization of graphical presentations of data.

In the spring of 2021, I completed an Individual Discovery Project in my Discovery Studio class at Georgia Tech. The project was designed by Michael Pick, who is widely known as the “Casual Engineer”. The parts that I used included; a 4GB Quad Core Raspberry Pi, USB-C power cable, Samsung Evo 32 GB Memory Card, ICE Tower CPU Cooling fan, and a miniature keyboard. I used the ICE Tower CPU Cooling fan for the Raspberry Pi to solve the heat dissipation. It also reduces the Raspberry Pi’s temperature from temperatures as high as 80 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees celsius. The designer provided STL files of multiple apparatuses. The one that I utilized was the casing. This represents a desktop. The case had two openings in the front and an L-shaped opening in the back. The Raspberry Pi itself ended up being too big to be placed inside of the casing. This was because of the increase in length caused by the memory card that was attached to the front of the Raspberry Pi. I made the decision to cut an opening at the bottom of the casing. This was done in the maker space. First, I had to draw an outline of the area that needed to be cut, using a sharpie. Then I used a drill to make a circular opening. That allowed me to use a jigsaw to saw out the rest of the area. With the opening created, the USB and ethernet ports were now able to be accessed while the Raspberry Pi was inside the casing. The USB ports are used to connect the keyboard and the display monitor. The result is a tiny-sized desktop.

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