A Glimpse Inside Christopher Brinkley’s NASA Internship
Christopher Brinkley will be one of the first students to graduate from Chatham’s Immersive Media program, an interdisciplinary learning experience that equips students with knowledge of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality technology, architecture, 3D modeling, game development and more. This spring, Chris got to put his learning expertise to good use by completing an internship with NASA! And though his work is highly classified, he was able to offer a glimpse inside the type of projects he was working on and tell us more about his future plans for the world of game development and immersive media—
Could you tell us a little bit about your internship with NASA in layperson’s terms?
Christopher Brinkley: The best way to explain my NASA immersive media internship is this: it consisted of building models for future VR projects, testing out current builds of VR developments, doing bug tests, and working with the XR teams on different stations at NASA to create an internal website for proper asset use.
What did the process of getting the internship look like?
CB: I was going through some internship possibilities with my parents; they live in Washington DC where a lot of federal jobs are at. They mentioned that different government jobs have started to get into VR stuff, so why not look into something? I like science. I like the idea of using VR for space exploration. So I figured, let's see if NASA has anything and lo and behold, they had a few positions available on their internship website. I signed up just before the semester started and a few days later, NASA approached me to do an interview. After that, I was rushing to get the forms and paperwork ready because this was a last minute thing.
Can you talk a little bit about how it feels to be completing an internship with NASA?
CB: I told my mentor, Douglas North Cook, that I was worried about balancing this internship with my final semester. He basically said, Just go with it. This is gonna be a once in a lifetime thing. It's an internship with NASA. This isn't something that you brush off. We'll work with you. It was an interesting start to the semester.
Are you completing the internship on-site or virtually?
CB: Virtually. We had daily check-ins where we let a supervisor know what we accomplished that day and could ask any questions we had. I usually had one or two meetings daily with certain departments and I also had a weekly one on one with an on-site mentor.
What led you to studying immersive media at Chatham?
CB: I came from the Community College of Allegheny County in their multimedia and gaming associates program. My professor suggested that I check to see if there was anything that I wanted to go into around game development. When I looked into Chatham, I saw [the immersive media program]. I talked to Doug who explained a little bit about what the program was going to be. It is interesting to be a part of a class that's just starting out; I've been a guinea pig throughout my entire life for these kinds of programs.
The main reason I chose Chatham was because of the campus; it was pretty close to me and it is really beautiful. The promise of the technology that would be available for us and the passion that I could see from Doug showed me that this could be a program where they wanted to teach us and make it really useful for students.
What so far has been the highlight of your time in the immersive media program?
CB: I would have liked to do more on campus. Because of the pandemic, it has been interesting to try and work things out. In our field, with us working on computers all the time, we're comfortable working virtually. You'll have partners that work in different countries or work across the country. That's nothing new in the gaming or the technology industry. You have people from all over doing remote stuff. That has helped prepare us for what's going to be coming up. The best thing would have to be when we moved the [immersive media] studio over to the library. We finally got this big space where the immersive media students could just relax and chill out. It was nice to get a space of our own where we could collaborate with other immersive media students.
What are you hoping to do with immersive media post-graduation?
CB: My idea is to become an environmental designer with VR projects. One of the things I did for my capstone project was create a virtual psychiatrist’s office for kids and adults. I tried to focus on making the making the area look as nice and as interesting as possible. I want to make VR environments that look as livable and emotional as can be. I've had grandparents and relatives that were bed stricken. I wanted to create their houses in VR so that they could explore it one more time or just relax in their own little world.
Anything else that you’d like to highlight?
CB: I look forward to seeing what comes next out of Chatham's immersive media program. New students will be going into a program that is just starting to get really big. Keep at it. Keep up to date on new technology. If you think you're too old to do stuff, I turned 34 this year. I'm graduating with a bachelor’s degree that I'm still learning more about every day. Don't let anything hold you back from what you want to do with your life and always try to better yourself every day.
Ready to explore what immersive media at Chatham has to offer? Visit our website today!