Breaking into the engineering industry and making your mark is no easy feat. Especially as a part of the up-and-coming generation of young engineers, it can be difficult to decide which field to pursue. Quintin Hatzis, is already blazing his own trail toward a prosperous career in RF engineering after finishing his second internship with Mini-Circuits this summer. Coming back to us for more experience before his senior year of college was a no-brainer, and he has excelled with our engineering test team in Carlsbad, California.
Hailing from Syracuse University with a degree in electrical engineering, Quintin’s first internship was at the company’s Lincoln, Rhode Island facility. There, he focused mainly on updating firmware and creating sample codes for customers to try out with devices they’re thinking of purchasing. He even wrote programming manuals for some fan-controlled devices. This year, Quintin craved a change in scenery and is working with the Engineering Test Team on the west coast. He has taken a very hands-on role in testing amplifiers, recording the test data, and creating Graphical User Interface (GUI) programs to make various testing and analyzing of data faster and easier.
In the testing area, Quintin performed RF characterization, measuring P1dB, P3dB, P5dB, and Psat compression points, s-parameters, harmonics, and IMD under both CW and pulsed conditions. He has also put together multiple excel sheets and reports to record the data from his tests. So far, Quintin has created three GUI programs with another two currently in the pipeline. The first is an S-parameter GUI, which takes in a folder of s2p files, and creates graphs from them. The second is a compression testing GUI that creates graphs of the various compression points listed above. The third GUI is a POUT v. PIN GUI that graphs various things v. PIN including POUT, gain, PAE, Pdiss, Idd and more. All three of the GUIs Quintin has created generate reports in Excel, which summarizes the data from the original files. They also lay out the testing conditions and provide users with a pivot chart where they can graph the data themselves. Quintin’s fourth and fifth GUI, which are currently in progress, will be used for intermodulation and harmonics.
When asked what the most influential experience has been during his internship he said, “having access to the network analyzers and learning how to use the test equipment with various devices was a valuable tool and experience. In school, we mostly learn through theory and only practice with basic instruments. At Mini-Circuits, I was able to do much more in depth training and testing to get hands-on experience and a broader sense of industry practices.”
Conversely, the most challenging thing for Quintin during his internship was writing the GUI programs, while that was also what he enjoyed most. With 1500 lines of code required for each program, the challenge pushed him beyond his comfort zone and proved to be a valuable learning curve for him to dive deep into the world of test engineering. In addition, to ensure the programs were running correctly, Quintin had to constantly double check the data coming out of the GUIs and cross reference it with the test records he made previously.
After his senior year, Quintin plans to stay on at Syracuse for an additional year to earn his masters focused in RF. After that, he plans to apply for jobs within the RF field since he has come to fall in love with the industry after his experience at Mini-Circuits. The Pipeline Program also holds a lot of appeal for Quintin and he plans to apply for that as well. Ultimately, he hopes to move into a management role in the future.
“At Mini-Circuits, I really loved the people and community I found there,” said Quintin. “Everyone has been very friendly and open to helping me when I have questions. It has also been helpful to learn more about the business and my coworkers’ career paths and how they got where they are today. It’s been very inspirational, especially as someone who will be new to the workforce and the idea of starting fresh can be daunting.”
When Quintin isn’t working on becoming an engineer, he enjoys playing ice hockey, as he is a part of the men’s hockey league for his school and has a life-long passion for the sport. He also participates in intramural football and wiffleball, and likes to stay active where he can. Quintin also likes to build Legos in his spare time, with his favorite piece being the UCS Star Destroyer. As his internship comes to close this summer, Mini-Circuits wishes Quintin the very best as he embarks on his senior year.
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