Back to Ottawa I Go! (F25)

This term, I've been working as a Process Engineering Co-op at Lumentum, a company that designs and manufactures fiber optic networking equipment. In my role as a process engineering co-op, I've been helping refine the automation of assembly processes. This includes extensive work with 6-axis Universal Robots robot programming in Python, machine vision with OpenCV, epoxy dispensing, and much more.

This job has been a fantastic experience to immerse me in a software-heavy role with just enough mechanical components to keep me sane. There's been so much to learn every single day as I've never had this amount or complexity of coding before. The team at Lumentum has been immensely supportive of every silly question I've had, in particular my manager Matthew Laidlaw.

This is my second time working in Ottawa, and it's greatly improved my opinion of the place. Last time I was here, while working at Blackberry QNX in Kanata, I also lived in Barrhaven, which meant 1 1/2 hour long commutes each way in the freezing Ottawa winter... on OC Transpo. Commuting and the weather sucked out any enjoyment of the term, and the snow and slush made it ugly. This time though, I got to catch the tail end of summer and enjoy the autumn colors, and Ottawa is just so much better. There's endless beautiful nature, and now that I have a bike, I can explore the (honestly!) good cycling infrastructure here. Biking along the Rideau or Ottawa Rivers, crossing into Gatineau, or zipping around downtown is just so much fun. As well, transit has been massively improved by the construction of Line 2.

The co-op cohort at Lumentum is very social, which has made work very exciting. I feel like co-ops further from Waterloo force people to get out of their comfort zone and actually make new friends, and that holds true here. Of course, we've gone on a good number of trips like biking the river, haunted houses at Saunders Farm, and comedy shows. But we also just hang out, whether that be a spontaneous trip to Chipotle at 10pm on a Sunday, or just hanging out during lunch. I don't think you'll find a more fun and supportive group of co-ops anywhere else.