Internship SkyGeo - Marije van Hell
As part of my bachelor I did an internship at the customer & sales department of SkyGeo. This company uses InSAR (a technique that combines images from RADAR satellites) to monitor deformation on the Earth’s surface. Think of detecting deformation in reservoirs, pipelines, dams or entire cities with millimetre precision and weekly updates.
Dutch National Subsidence Map
During my internship we launched the Dutch National Subsidence Map, which shows the amount of sinking soil in areas throughout the Netherlands. This is important as subsidence can cause damage to infrastructure, the water balance and can lead to higher flood risks and drastic changes in the landscape. The project received a lot of media attention. As a result I had to answer a lot of phone calls of concerned citizens with challenging questions. This was fun to do, because it allowed me to put my learned knowledge about the earth and the soil subsidence map into practice.
Working life
The advantage of doing an internship during your Bachelor is that you gain insight into the ‘real’ working life. This way you can experience how your knowledge of the earth can be of added value within a company. On top of that, you will notice that the focus of an academic environment is very different compared to that of a company. This is very interesting to see in real life, and teaches you a lot. I would highly recommend doing an internship before you finish your study programme, and gain experience outside of the “safe” space of the TU Delft.
Nice to know is that after my internship, I started my master's degree in this subject (Geoscience and Remote sensing) and am still work as a student at SkyGeo.
