R&D Engineer (Full-Time Co-op) · January – July 2026
Nephros R&D Co-op
Overview
I spent seven months as a full-time R&D engineering co-op at Nephros, a medical-grade water filtration company in South Orange, NJ. On a small R&D team, my work covered new product CAD, test rig design, manufacturing support, and process improvements. Work followed ISO 9001/14001-aligned procedures; designs were carried through validation testing, reliability analysis, and root cause analysis.
New Product Development
I developed CAD layouts, drawings, and Bills of Materials for new product development, and iterated designs through the company's validation and reliability process. The main project was preliminary CAD for a next-generation filter. I designed for injection molding and spin welding from the first sketch and carried a full tolerance analysis through the design, which was approved to advance toward production.
- Design for manufacturing: Injection molding and spin welding constraints built into the geometry from the start.
- Tolerance analysis: Full stack-up carried through the preliminary design.
- Documentation: CAD layouts, drawings, and BOMs maintained through each design iteration.
- Outcome: Design approved to advance toward production.
Test Engineering
I designed and built test rigs that run unattended and log data for analysis.
- Automated capacity-cycling rig: I designed and built a rig with PLC-programmed motorized ball valves and overflow and failure safeguards. The expired-filter degradation testing it made possible requalified $200K+ of written-off inventory for sale.
- Filter manifold validation: I wrote and executed validation protocols for a new filter manifold on a purpose-built rig, and redesigned the test procedures so runs were more repeatable and faster to turn around.
- Heat-cycle rig upgrade: I rebuilt the rig with more heat-tolerant components, new safety measures, and DASYLab data acquisition, then overhauled its onboarding protocol. New-engineer training time dropped by more than 75%.
Process Improvements
Between test programs, I worked on process improvements in the R&D operation. I reorganized the R&D warehouse and built an inventory tracking app in Microsoft Power Apps, which cut filter retrieval from 45 minutes to under 2. I also validated in-house label printing, reducing relabeling turnaround from 2 weeks (supplier) to 5 minutes (in-house).
- Inventory retrieval: 45 minutes → under 2 minutes.
- Relabeling turnaround: 2 weeks → 5 minutes, saving $10,000+/year.
- Training time: heat-rig onboarding down more than 75% after the overhaul.