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Milligan, fellow mechanical engineering major Cesar Velez and engineering mechanics major Petar Vorkapich worked as design engineers, while mechanical engineering major Marcus Thelen served on Fincantieri\u2019s project management team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thelen, a senior from Madison graduating in December 2024, says his two months in Italy showed him just how challenging project management can be\u2014particularly when working on the gargantuan cruise ships Fincantieri produces for some of the world\u2019s leading cruise lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re worth close a billion dollars generally,\u201d says Thelen, who\u2019s planning to take some of those lessons into a career in construction project management after graduation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Milligan, Velez and Vorkapich, meanwhile, designed diagrams and performed underlying calculations for ventilation systems\u2014work that\u2019s being implemented by the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI know a lot of internships kind of give interns the \u2018side\u2019 projects, but it was super cool to hear that the work we did was actually impactful and meaningful,\u201d says Milligan, a junior from San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was cool to see we made an impact in the short amount of time we were there,\u201d adds Velez, a junior from New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gabriele Librandi, manager for university and research at Fincantieri and the point person for the internship program, says his colleagues were impressed by how quickly the UW-Madison engineering students grasped concepts and contributed. That\u2019s no accident, says Russ Johnson, the college\u2019s director of corporate relations who, along with John Garnetti from the Office of Business Engagement, helped broker the partnership with Fincantieri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBadger engineers come out well-equipped to hit the ground running because of the emphasis that we make on hands-on training: things like senior design projects, hands-on lab work, as well as the strong internship and co-op programs that we offer,\u201d says Johnson. \u201cMany engineering schools claim to have similar programs, but we clearly excel at providing these experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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