Student Profile: Zane Hintzman (AccessComputing News - January 2016)

My name is Zane Hintzman, and I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2015 with my B.S. in Computer Science. This summer, I participated in an internship with Disney Research in Pittsburgh. For my project, I worked on an interface for streaming data from a motion capture system and a radio frequency identification reader simultaneously. The goal of the project was to create a tool that could track people moving in a specified two dimensional region. The internship’s main focus was to create a unified software environment that allowed multiple technologies to work together simultaneously. 

I found out about the internship through an email that was sent to Computer Science majors at Carnegie Mellon University. I spoke to the contact for this opportunity, and he gave me a related project to work on over the summer. 

I really enjoyed the overall experience. My project was interesting, and my mentor was really proud of my progress. I had a lot more interaction with my mentor than I have in previous internships. The Disney Research group also held many social events that allowed people at the offices to network.

I learned about many new technologies during my internship. For example, I learned how a motion capture system works, as well as how RFID readers work. I learned about the benefits and downsides to each kind of technology I used. Working on my project, I became more familiar with Visual Studio and the C# language.

I had a great experience working for Disney. This internship inspired me to be open to career options that use technologies I haven’t had much experience with—I encourage other students to be open to working with new technology and learning new skills.