During her summer internship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Olin College of Engineering robotics undergraduate student Ivy Mahnke took a hands-on approach to testing algorithms for underwater navigation. She first found herself working on underwater robotics as an intern at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2024. Attracted by the opportunity to work on new problems and cutting-edge algorithm development, I began an internship in 2025 with Lincoln Laboratory’s Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group.
Mahnke spent the summer developing and troubleshooting algorithms that help human divers and robotic vehicles work together to navigate underwater. The underwater environment’s lack of traditional location aids, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), created navigation challenges that Manke and his leaders sought to overcome. Her research in the lab culminated in field testing of the algorithm on an operational underwater vehicle. Accompanying group staff to field test sites in the Atlantic Ocean, Charles River, and Lake Superior, Mahncke had the opportunity to see her software in action.
“One of the lead engineers on the project left to go to another job, and she said, ‘Here’s my laptop. Here’s what you need to do. I trust you to do them.’ So I ended up going out to sea not just as a reservist, but as one of the lead field testers,” Manke says. “I felt that my bosses saw me as the next generation of engineers, both at Lincoln Laboratory and in the industry at large.”
“Ivy’s internship coincided with a series of rigorous field tests at the end of an ambitious program,” said Madeline Miller, Mahnke’s internship supervisor. “We figuratively threw her into the water, but she played an integral role in our program’s ability to not only stay afloat, but to meet several of our goals.”
Lincoln Laboratory’s Summer Research Program runs from mid-May through August. Applications are now being accepted.
Video by Tim Briggs/MIT Lincoln Laboratory | 2 minutes 59 seconds
