TET interns Fajr Asghar and Vilma Svynarenko explored everything from solar cells to Täffä’s spaghetti in Aalto

Fajr Asghar, 14, and Vilma Svynarenko, 15, spent two weeks as TET interns in Aalto in October last year. They didn’t know each other beforehand.

‘First, I applied to different places, but then I thought why not come to Aalto University. I really like sciences, and I thought that this experience would help me in the future,’ says Fajr.

‘I didn’t know much about Aalto beforehand. I just sent an email to Veli-Matti Ikävalko at Aalto Junior, and I was accepted. I was just brave enough to get in touch,’ says Vilma.

Initially, Fajr’s and Vilma’s task was to calculate the efficiency of the solar cells.

‘We’ve used Google Sheets and Excel at school. That’s how we knew how to use them. And once we had the equations, it was easy to input the data. And we asked for help with what we didn’t understand. We also helped each other,’ Fajr says.

Soon their supervisor Imran Asghar was in trouble. Fajr and Vilma did all the calculations in just two days, and he had to come up with something else.

‘Their work was impressive. Therefore, I ended up giving them keywords and a very rough idea, and they wrote an article on sustainability, energy, and clean technologies in a very short time. And it was such a high quality, both the text and the drawings.’

Fajr and Vilma generated images for the article using AI, and the last one Vilma drew herself.

During the internship, Fajr and Vilma visited different buildings, departments and even one of the guild rooms.

‘We noticed that the charging stations in the library use renewable energy. And the overall atmosphere in Aalto is positive. No matter who you meet, everyone is passionate about what they do,’ Fajr says.

Fajr and Vilma also visited a different restaurant on campus every day.

‘Täffä’s spaghetti was our favourite,’ says Vilma.

Imran Asghar hosts quite many interns in Aalto, but most of them come for only one week. He found it interesting to get also the application of his niece Fajr.

‘When I had my defense 2012, Fajr came here too, even though she was very young at the time.’

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