During a summer internship at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, Ivy Mahncke, a robotics engineering student in the Olin College of Engineering, took a hands-on approach to testing underwater navigation algorithms. She first discovered her love of working with underwater robotics as an intern at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2024. Encouraged by the opportunity to solve modern problems and develop cutting-edge algorithms, Mahncke began an internship in 2025 with the Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group at Lincoln Laboratory.
Mahncke spent the summer developing and troubleshooting an algorithm that would facilitate a diver and a robotic vehicle navigate together underwater. The lack of established location aids — such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) — in the underwater environment created challenges for navigation that Mahncke and her mentors worked to overcome. Her work in the laboratory culminated in field tests of the algorithm on a working underwater vehicle. Accompanying the group’s staff to field test sites in the Atlantic Ocean, the Charles River and Lake Superior, Mahncke had the opportunity to see her software in action in the real world.
“One of the lead engineers on the project left to do another job. And she said, ‘Here’s my laptop. Here are the things you need to do. I trust you to do them.’ So I had to get out on the water not just as an extra pair of hands, but as one of the lead field testers,” says Mahncke. “I really felt like my managers saw me as the next generation of engineers, whether at Lincoln Lab or just in the broader industry.”
Lincoln Laboratory summer research program lasts from mid-May to August. Applications are now open.