“There are so many talented people at EPFL”

Louis Hutin © Gaétan Raynaud / EPFL

Louis Hutin © Gaétan Raynaud / EPFL

Louis Hutin, a Master’s student in mechanical engineering at EPFL, got firsthand experience with academic research when he completed a summer internship in one of the School’s labs. The video about fluid mechanics that he produced during his internship won an award from the American Physical Society.

Louis Hutin returned to EPFL early last summer after spending an exchange year at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he discovered that academic research was something he really enjoyed. He decided to explore his interest back at EPFL and sought out summer internship opportunities. “I just started sending emails to EPFL professors in fields I was interested in,” says Hutin. He got a positive response from Prof. Karen Mulleners at the Unsteady Flow Diagnostics Laboratory (UNFoLD), and his path was set – just as his classmates were packing their bags for their summer vacation.

Today Hutin is a first-year Master’s student with a major in fluid mechanics and a minor in space technology. He always wanted to become a professor – although he admits to being increasingly attracted to the private sector – and felt that an internship at a university lab would help move him towards that goal. “As a Bachelor’s student, I was always interested in the theoretical underpinnings of what we were studying,” he says. “And I know that performing lab research is one of the steps towards becoming a professor. That’s in part what prompted me to seek out this summer opportunity.”

Mrudhula Baskaran et Louis Hutin © Gaétan Raynaud / EPFL

At UNFoLD, Prof. Mulleners encouraged Hutin to submit a video he’d made during his internship to the Gallery of Fluid Motion competition held by the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Fluid Mechanics. That was the second year in a row that UNFoLD was taking part in the competition, which is intended to showcase images and visual works revealing the aesthetic and science of contemporary fluid mechanics. “The goal is to display the beauty of fluid mechanics in all its forms,” says Hutin, who found himself propelled into the roles of video producer, cameraman and director. He filmed an experiment that Mrudhula Baskaran, a PhD student at UNFoLD, was conducting to observe deformation in flexible surfaces subjected to fluidic forces, much like the leaves of a tree bending in the wind in order to withstand the force of the moving air.

The video shows that the experiment is quite simple. Plastic disks of varying levels of stiffness are pulled through water at different speeds by a metal rod, and a laser takes precise measurements of the resulting disk deformation. Hutin explains: “It was really interesting to see how much the deformations in the disks could reduce the drag force of the water.” The experiment showed that the disks respond like tree leaves, bending so that they don’t break.

The UNFoLD video – with Liszt’s Un Sospiro in D-flat major playing in the background – was named a Gallery Winner at the APS Division’s 75th Annual Meeting in November 2022. In addition to the enhanced visibility this brings to UNFoLD, it also gives the lab a chance to publish a guest article in the APS journal Physical Review Fluids.

Hutin feels that opportunities like his are still rare at EPFL. “I don’t know a lot of students who’ve done an internship at a university lab,” he says. “And it’s a shame, given all the labs here on campus!” Such programs have obvious benefits for both parties. “There are so many talented people at EPFL who could be of valuable help to laboratory scientists,” says Hutin. “These kinds of internships give students a chance to learn about real-world research and earn some money during the summer.”

Summer in the Lab
Through this program, EPFL gives its Bachelor’s students a unique opportunity to do a research internship over the summer. Students spend eight weeks between June and September gaining hands-on experience and working alongside distinguished professors.
Learn more at: https://www.epfl.ch/education/bachelor/enhanced-learning-programs/summer-in-the-lab-internship-program/


Author: Marwan El Chazli

Source: People