Where Did All the Interns Go?
This summer marks the fifth year of Carleton Immersive Media Studio’s (CIMS) involvement in two long-term research and training grants. A total of 21 students will travel locally and internationally to areas as far as Greece, to the School of Rural & Surveying Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, or staying locally to learn from contributors to the field of conservation such as Taylor Hazel Architects. Funded through the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Dr. Mario Santana and Dr. Stephen Fai lead the NSERC CREATE Heritage Engineering and the SSHRC New Paradigm/New Tools for Architectural Heritage in Canada Internship (NPNT) programs. These grants offer the opportunity for current undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate researchers to travel to partnering academic, not-for-profit, government, and industry offices to share and learn new digital techniques for the conservation and rehabilitation of heritage architecture.
The NSERC CREATE Heritage Engineering program’s long-term goal, as set by Dr. Santana, is to produce a cohort of trainees with technical and professional skills that are relevant to Canada’s built heritage industry. To achieve this goal, students from Civil & Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Information Technology, Architecture, and other disciplines are provided research and training opportunities with heritage professionals in the private and public sectors. Heritage Forums and workshops are offered frequently throughout the year to provide further opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing. This year, ten Masters and Ph.D. students from Carleton and UQAM will intern with heritage partners around the world. Elyse Hamp, a Masters-level Engineering from Carleton, will travel to Guimaraes, Portugal to work on a project with the University of Minho for the preventive conservation of cultural heritage buildings in Braga and Guimaraes. Miquel Reina Ortiz, a Ph.D.-level student of architecture at Carleton, will assist in creating a meta-data catalogue of heritage assets in Barcelona, Spain with the architectural firm 300,000km/s. In Ottawa, Masters-level Architecture student Kevin Complido will work on various projects for ERA Architects, including the development of materials related to communicating historical values for interpretation and digital storytelling.
The NPNT Training program, funded by SSHRC and led by Dr. Fai, addresses the theoretical, practical, and ethical imperatives surrounding the use of new and emerging digital technologies for the conservation and rehabilitation of our built heritage. Internships are organized within Canada for undergraduates and internationally for graduate students to provide them with the opportunity for interdisciplinary research with leading academic and industry professionals in the use of digital technologies for architectural heritage. This year, 11 interns are participating in the grant. Jesse Rafeiro, Carleton Architecture Ph.D. student, is travelling to Lisbon, Portugal to work with professor Anna Tome at the University of Lisbon. Kareem Mitchell, Carleton Architecture Masters student, will spend the summer in Dublin, Ireland working with Professor Maurice Murphy in the Dublin Institute of Technology. Staying in Ottawa, Architectural undergraduate student Jessica Mendoza and Architecture Masters student Daniela Veisman will be working at the National Trust of Canada, whose mission is to make historic places the cornerstone of a vibrant and sustainable future. In addition to Carleton students being provided with intern opportunities, students from the partnering institutions may participate. This year, Anna Turrina, a masters student from the Politecnico Di Milano in Milan, Italy will be spending the summer at CIMS, participating in the various documentation, building information modelling, simulation, and digitally assisted storytelling projects that are under development.
The NSERC CREATE Heritage Engineering and the SSHRC NPNT training program provide an excellent opportunity for Carleton University and partnering institution students to collaborate with academic and industry leaders in architectural conservation. This summer, 21 students are travelling around the world. They journey to Lisbon and Minho, Portugal; Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, Spain; Athens, Greece; Dublin, Ireland; and stay locally in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Gatineau, Canada. Through these two grants, Carleton University is ensuring they remain a leading contributor to the field of heritage conservation architecture.