Our summer intern program grew to its largest class yet in 2026, with five students joining FlowCam across hardware engineering and our applications lab. Four came from Maine schools—two from the University of Maine and two recent Bates College graduates—and the fifth, returning for his second summer with us, studies mechanical engineering at the University of Ottawa.
On the hardware side, the interns designed components for manufacturability, assembly, and improved performance and learned how to build a FlowCam from start to finish. In the applications lab, they developed staining protocols for microplastic detection, analyzed plankton, characterized visible and subvisible particles in container-closure systems, and prototyped alternative microfluidic controls to broaden what's possible with FlowCam.
None of that happened in isolation. Each intern worked alongside the engineers and application scientists who own these problems day-to-day, and the mentorship went both ways: our teams came away with data, parts, and protocols that are already having a positive impact. That's been the goal of this program since we started it: give students and recent graduates genuine ownership and a clearer sense of the career they're heading toward, and get real work done in the process.
Meet our interns:
Pictured from left to right: Jeremy Brogan, Kate Ares, Kaitlin Vigue, Ross Bryant (President and CEO, Yokogawa Fluid Imaging), Che-Hao Saito, Kian O'Reilly
Che-Hao Saito, University of Maine, Orono
Hello everyone! I’m Che-Hao Saito, and I am from South Portland, Maine. This fall I will be entering my junior year studying mechanical engineering at the University of Maine, Orono. Before starting this summer, I was excited to join Yokogawa Fluid Imaging to gain some engineering work experience in a professional setting, and also to apply the knowledge I’d learned from my engineering coursework. I am still deciding what field I would like to pursue career-wise, so having the opportunity to learn about the experiences of FlowCam team members who work in related fields has been both interesting and enlightening, and the variety of work I performed and witnessed during my time here has given me a sense of what type of work professionals do.
During this summer, I’ve worked with the hardware engineering team on various product development projects. These projects have ranged from more open-ended design of specific components to more general support work. I have definitely enjoyed designing parts under the guidance of our Hardware Engineering Manager, Ted McHenry, the most. Doing design work has reinforced some of the principles of designing parts for manufacturability and assembly, as well as dimensioning and tolerancing for crucial features of parts. Fortunately, I have also gotten a fair share of hands-on work where I helped build a FlowCam and flow cells within the first few weeks, which really helped me gain an overview of how FlowCam’s pieces fit together and how they work.
Kian O'Reilly, University of Ottawa
Hi, I’m Kian O’Reilly, and I’m a third-year Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Ottawa. I was born in Toronto, and I’ve lived all around Canada and the US. For the last five years, my family has lived in Maine, and I spent most of my high school years here. At the University of Ottawa, I've been very involved in sports, and I’ve been taking some great classes on topics including product development, thermodynamics, and mechanics of materials. I’ve been able to apply lots of these skills in my second summer interning at Yokogawa Fluid Imaging Technologies.
My focus this summer has been sustaining work, helping where I can with everyday tasks and small projects, including making improvements to the tubing in FlowCam LO. I worked to find alternative materials for the fragile silicone tubing and fittings to improve their durability. After testing and design tweaks, we will be incorporating this new tubing in future FlowCam LO instruments. Another project I worked on was improving a small retainer part used in most FlowCam models. This component helps avoid shipping damage—saving money and the customer's time. Most of my projects were like these, taking small things off my colleagues’ plates so that they can do the important work they need to. I enjoyed every minute of my work this summer and have enjoyed working with my fellow interns and colleagues!
Kaitlin Vigue, University of Maine, Orono
Hi! I'm Kaitlin Vigue. I will be a junior this coming fall at the University of Maine, Orono, and I am studying biomedical engineering. I am the Vice President of my sorority, Chi Omega, and also a member of the Maine College of Engineering and Computing Student Advisory Board. I have an interest in careers in the medical and engineering fields, specifically medical sales, device development, research, and clinical opportunities. I love learning new things, problem-solving, and contributing to meaningful projects. My career goal is for my work to have a lasting impact beyond my lifetime and to make meaningful connections along the way!
This summer, I have had the opportunity to work as a FlowCam Application Scientist intern. I have contributed to sample analyses of both freshwater and coastal phytoplankton samples under the guidance of our User Experience Specialist, Savannah Stresser, but my primary summer project has been working with microplastics! Everyone has heard of them, but there are still some underlying issues surrounding their detection in the environment and how to monitor their presence in society. I have been working on method reproducibility and optimization for detecting and identifying Nile Red-stained microplastics using FlowCam 8400 with a 532 nm laser. I have explored different media suspensions and polymer types to understand how they behave across different temperatures, environments, and agitations. It’s a great privilege to be a part of such a meaningful project that touches on something everyone wants to uncover. My time this summer has been amazing, and the people truly make the place! I have enjoyed spending the summer with my mentor, Marketing Director Louise Brogan, and my fellow application lab interns, Kate and Jeremy. Overall, this research has been very rewarding, and I have been grateful for every opportunity. Thank you for an amazing summer!
Kate Ares, Bates College Graduate
Hi everyone! My name is Kate Ares. I am one of this summer's Application Scientist interns here at Yokogawa Fluid Imaging. This past May I graduated from Bates College with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and minor in Mathematics. I had the amazing opportunity of getting to play on the Bates College volleyball team and experience college as a student-athlete for all four years. In the coming months, I will be moving to Boston to pursue a Master of Science in Bioengineering at Northeastern University. I enjoy anything involving the lab! At Bates, I was able to participate in hands-on learning through my courses, my teaching assistant positions, and my semester-long, laboratory-based thesis. My thesis studied the effects of chromium movement through soil and its ability to contaminate runoff and residential wells, specifically within the town of Leeds, Maine. That work led to my interest in water-quality detection technology.
Throughout the summer, I have worked with my teammates on multiple projects under the mentorship of Louise Brogan. At the start of the summer, I worked with the other interns on a series of microplastic studies. As Kaitlin continued her work with Nile Red staining, I transitioned to similar work involving microplastic staining with Nile Blue A, using FlowCam Cyano. I also had the opportunity to work with FlowCam's Senior Application Scientist, Tyler Carter, on biopharmaceutical applications of FlowCam. We worked with both FlowCam 8100 and FlowCam LO to identify visible and subvisible particles found in CCS (container closure systems). This summer has been an incredible opportunity to learn from impactful and dedicated scientists while working with a kind and collaborative group of interns. I am so grateful to have experienced this summer at Yokogawa Fluid Imaging and all that it has taught me!
Jeremy Brogan, Bates College Graduate
Hi, I'm Jeremy Brogan, and I graduated from Bates College in 2025 with a dual major in Music Composition and Philosophy and a concentration in Digital and Computational Studies. Toward the end of my degree, I became interested in scientific measurement and instrumentation, culminating in a novel Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) prototype as part of my thesis project.
Building on my passion for microcontroller development and experimentation, I made the pivot into charting new applications for FlowCam through my internship as an Application Scientist in the Marketing Department at Yokogawa Fluid Imaging Technologies. This summer, I have been working to develop alternative microfluidic controls and options for automation within FlowCam’s current operational capabilities. I've also worked with Kaitlin and Kate to develop a staining protocol for optimizing FlowCam’s detection and sorting of microplastics across polymer types based on fluorescence, folding in data analysis and processing techniques to enhance the visibility of relationships in the datasets collected by our intern group. I've been lucky to be offered a broad range of experiences during my internship.
Thank you to our 2026 class of interns! Between you, you designed parts headed for production, redesigned important components, and built the beginnings of a microplastics detection method our application scientists will keep refining. Just as valuable were the questions you asked—the kind that make the rest of us look harder at how we do things. Che-Hao and Kaitlin head back to Orono this fall, Kian to Ottawa, Kate to Northeastern for her master's in bioengineering, and Jeremy to pursue a PhD in biomedical science and engineering. Wherever each of you lands, we're glad FlowCam was part of the path, and we can't wait to see what you build next.
Interested in a career with us? Check out our careers page.
