Phillip Helms

Research & Development Co-op:  ExxonMobil Research and Engineering

Paulsboro, New Jersey

January 2016 - August 2016

 

• Used a combination of experimental design and theory to augment fundamental understanding of phenomena that are important in the petroleum industry.

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Research Assistant:  Institute for Clean and Secure Energy

Salt Lake City, Utah

January 2014 - January 2016

 

• Carried out testing for a computational fluid dynamics program designed for large eddy regime combustion simulations. Cases were run using supercomputers at the University of Utah’s Center for High Performance Computing. 

• Assisted in the development and evaluation of software designed to decrease computational costs of combustion simulations by utilizing complex statistical analysis and linear transformations of direct numerical simulation data.

 

Summer Intern:  Rio Tinto, Kennecott

Magna, Utah

May 2015 - August 2015

 

• Optimized usage and efficiency of an automatic reagent addition control by resolving operator concerns and creating spreadsheets, identifying and correcting issues in logic, and creating spreadsheets and VBA macros to calculate ideal operating parameters.

• Designed automated operational reporting tools using Excel, PI ProcessBook, and DCS to provide live indicators of plant performance.

• Gained laboratory experience in X-Ray Fluorescence, Malvern size analysis, wet and dry sieving, and filter pressing while testing samples to determine ideal process parameters.  

 

Research Assistant:  Laboratory for Optical Nanotechnologies

Salt Lake City, Utah

​June 2014 - August 2015

 

• Designed Comsol LiveLink with Matlab simulations of two key optical nanopatterning processes comprising of models of interference patterning, electromagnetic wave penetration, and photochemical reactions resulting in most accurate simulations of process to date.

• Reduced total computational costs for novel computational spectrometer and camera by 94% through the application of the direct binary search and vectorization.

 

Summer Intern:  PK Clean

Salt Lake City, Utah

​May 2013 - August 2013

 

• Independently researched, developed, executed and tested catalyst production resulting in the first in-house production of a catalyst previously costing 15% of total operating expenses.

• Trained upon and operated a scanning electron microscope to analyze the physical properties of multiple potential catalysts.

• Gained practical skills and experience in areas such as plumbing, wiring and manufacturing through assisting in the construction of a pilot plant designed to facilitate plastic waste pyrolysis.