Hugo Schutzberg - BEng. Materials Engineering

I first would like to thank Mr. Schull and Ms. Yang, for donating to this wonderful fund. I was able to make lasting international connections that wouldn’t have been possible without their generous donation. My name is Hugo Schutzberg, I am a fourth year (entering my fifth) materials engineering student at McGill University and have just recently completed my 2^nd of 3 co-ops through this program. With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting my search for co-ops this summer, I am extremely grateful for this award to allow me to have a paid remote opportunity.

I participated in this (virtual) international activity because it was through a McGill professor that now teaches in Germany at Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg or TU Frieberg.

TU Frieberg is the top German technical university. The school is in a historical mining town in Freiberg, Saxony. While historically the university focused mainly on mining technologies, it has created more programs focused on more modern engineering fields, such as environmental and sustainable engineering as well as resource management.

The school I was involved with was the Institute for Nonferrous Metallurgy and Purest Materials (INEMET). This institute is concerned with researching hydro- and pyrometallurgy and material recycling. Additionally, they also work on modern semiconductor materials.

Since this organization is a university, most of the individuals that work there either hold a Masters or PhD, or are on track to complete their degree. Their renumeration is not as good as if they were employed by a private company, but they enjoy the research they do and are all very knowledgeable.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this co-op was entirely remote. I mostly worked from home and I sometimes worked while vacationing with my family. Most of my work involved reading research papers and writing notes about things that stood out. The goal was to complete a literature on the current research done on lead anodes for copper electrowinning. Each week I would have a meeting with Samar (another McGill CO-OP), and Aaron, our main supervisor, to run through any questions or interesting things we found through our research.

Finding academic papers was relatively easy as McGill has good access to all kinds of papers and conference proceedings. It was rare not to have access to a paper that I wanted to read. The papers I found were organized using a reference manager called Zotero. Once we had enough information to formulate a complete literature review, Samar and I sat down do create a plan on the best way to approach the writing. We broke the paper up into similar sections as Samar was writing about zinc electrowinning and I wrote about copper electrowinning. We each submitted drafts that were then reviewed by Aaron and a research assistant from Stanford University, Juliana, that was performing Cu electrowinning experiments at TU Frieberg this summer.

This remote co-op internship turned out to be much better than I expected. At first, I thought it would be like an online semester where I would be in front of my computer screen constantly. However since the workload was much more focused and measurable (280 hrs), I was able to break up my time and approach this literature review with ease and comfort in order to work most effectively. I found I was more interested in the research when I wanted to do it which helped me stay focused during my work periods. I thought this CO-OP was very different from my last one mainly because it was self-guided. All in all, I thought this co-op experience provided me with insight in how I want to operate in my professional future.

The money from this award was incredibly helpful to subsidize my food and rent this summer as there was little economic activity, I was hard pressed to find a full-time job in my academic field. This opportunity was greatly appreciated, and it could not have been possible without the help of Mr. Schull and Ms. Yang.