About the company:
ABV Technology works in tandem with the craft brewing industry. Their equipment enables brewers to create hard seltzer and non-alcoholic (NA) beverages from their existing recipes. Already, ABV has partnered with big, local brands like Utepils in Minneapolis and Ursa Minor in Duluth.
This last year, the team at ABV took the opportunity to refine their product and work on a new prototype that is as user-friendly and easy to operate as possible.
ABV’s founders all come from start-up backgrounds and have often relied on the SciTech Internship Program to find and hire college STEM majors to assist with their work. That’s how Isabella Wenthe secured her chemical engineering internship with ABV and was brought on to help with the prototype development.
“Overall, we’ve just been really happy with SciTech,” said Grant Williamson, a Senior Product Engineer at ABV. “It’s been great for us in terms of recruiting high-quality applicants. Finding those high-quality applicants with good skillsets, it’s the key to everything and it’s huge for us.”
Meet the Intern:
Of all the candidates that applied for this position it was Wenthe’s previous experience working as a lab tech that helped her stand apart. Whereas in that role Wenthe’s responsibilities were fairly minor, lots of labeling and sorting, her tasks with the prototype are far more in-depth. It’s her job to run tests and gather data sets that ABV can use to improve the prototype’s performance.
“I like being able to run the chamber because it’s kind of meticulous, I get to make sure everything is set up right,” Wenthe said. “But I also like all the new things that I get to learn. Grant will have something new for me most weeks. Like right now, I’m learning to code for the machine and that’s been really interesting.”
Wenthe had some previous exposure to coding but it’s been here at her ABV internship where she’s really started to get the hang of it. Now she’s doing most of the coding on her own and it’s something she hopes will give her a leg-up later on in her career.
“We have specific goals in terms of meeting our deadlines on this product, but to me those go hand-in-hand with the growth of an intern,” Williamson said. “That’s why I try to give them learning opportunities, like with the coding, but also have them focus on a real project that makes a difference and has concrete goals associated with it.”
“I’ve really appreciated this internship,” said Wenthe. “it’s made me more motivated toward school and it’s made me more excited to be a chemical engineer […] It definitely gives me pride that I can work on something that other people will be able to use and knowing that I’ll be helping the company directly. That’s one of the reasons why I really like this internship specifically, that I can see the outcome of what I do.”
Get involved
Make an impact on a future STEM professional’s life and strengthen your talent pipeline. Start planning your internship today at scitechmn.org. At least 80 wage matches are available on a first come, first hire basis between now and August 2021.
Are you a returning student? The new program year is underway! Reactivate your account and start applying for internships today.