The Advancing San Diego (ASD) Internship Program launched in Summer 2020 in a remote-capacity amid the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to provide up to 100 San Diego-based companies with fully subsidized interns. This program targets companies with 100 employees or less, which comprise 98 percent of all businesses in San Diego, employ nearly two thirds of San Diegans, and account for 70 percent of job growth. A key issue for these companies has been a lack of time and resources to recruit the skilled talent necessary to continue their growth.
As students are closing out their Fall engineering internship experiences, EDC is reintroducing this blog series to highlight the innovative local companies that comprise the second cohort of the program, and the interns they hosted.
In this feature, we sat down with Dr. Davoud Zamani, Technical Director at ALD Technical Solutions. A part of the second cohort of host companies, ALD Technical Solutions is a cost-effective innovative solution provider that repairs, retrofits, and upgrades offshore and onshore infrastructures using high quality and high performance composite materials. ALD specializes in developing and supplying high performance, high temperature, high chemical resistance, and underwater composite systems. Additionally, the company provides material selection, engineering design, project planning, contractor/ installer training and approval, written specifications, on-site quality control, quality assurance, and technical oversight.
Read on for more from ALD Technical Solutions co-founder Dr. Davoud Zamani.
Tell us about your company and a little bit about yourself?
ALD Technical Solution is a women-owned Cleantech startup founded in 2018 in San Diego. Our mission is to leverage the potential of advanced composite materials by developing new innovative technologies in infrastructure, power transmission lines, and clean and renewables energies. My background is in material science and composite materials. I am a co-founder of this company and work alongside other business partners who focus on different sections ranging from mechanical engineering, customer, and business development. On a day-to-day basis, I am the Technical Director and oversee the technological developments, most specifically for composite material applications.
Why was your company founded, and what are your current points of focus?
My partner and I have many years of industrial background for advanced composite materials and saw there were a lot of room where we can use advanced composite materials. Advanced composite materials are typically used in aerospace applications but recently, developments have been made where applicable to other industries such as automotive, infrastructures, and renewable energy. ALD Technical Solutions focuses on developing new innovative applications of advanced composite materials. Within the infrastructure retrofit division, we develop advanced composite material technologies to upgrade and retrofit aged steel and concrete infrastructures. The other division is currently in development and focuses on the application of advanced composite materials in power transmission lines that can be used to increase the power capacity of power lines, which is needed due to significantly accelerating the increased penetration of renewable energies.
What does growth look like over the next few years?
Right now, we are conducting testing qualifications for a couple developments at UCLA Labs, which will help us determine ALD Technical Solution’s next steps. We see huge potential applications for the work that we are currently doing, especially foreseeing large developments within Southern California.
Tell us a little bit about your interns and the value they bring.
I wanted to start by thanking the for giving us this opportunity to host two interns for our company. I really appreciate the EDC’s assistance as they were very supportive and developed a very good program. We have two interns: one of them is a mechanical engineering student and focuses on mostly solid work, AutoCAD, designs, simulations, and modeling’s, while the other focuses on simulations, modeling, and customer demonstrations for our composite wire wrap technologies. Both are eager to learn, smart, and hard working. We have meetings twice a week where I get updates and discuss the projects. It absolutely is a good learning opportunity for them since they were exposed to industry and composite material applications.
In your opinion, what is special about San Diego’s science and technology community, and the talent that drives it?
San Diego is a nice place to live. We had the opportunity to live in different locations in the United States and Europe and we chose to live here in San Diego. San Diego is a tech hub, and we have UC San Diego and other colleges and universities that bring in a lot of talent. San Diego is also paying special attention to renewable energy and clean energy developments. Additionally, we have a composite center within the Department of Defense compounds in Southern California. All these factors played a role in why we chose to establish our company in the region. Lastly, San Diego does not deal with the infamous traffic issues of Los Angeles but still offers the various amenities of living in Southern California.
Learn more about Advancing San Diego and our internship program.
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