North Smithfield resident to graduate from URI on May 17

KINGSTON, R.I. – May 6, 2009 – Adam Muratori spent a year studying and working in Germany as part of his curriculum at the University of Rhode Island’s International Engineering Program. As he looks toward graduation on May 17, he knows that it was his time in Germany that led to the job in Rhode Island that he will start next month.

“I’ve always been into computers, taking stuff apart, learning how things work,” said the North Smithfield native. “That interest translated into the study of electrical engineering when I came to URI.”

When he enrolled in the International Engineering Program, he knew he was also going to have to study a foreign language, so he picked German.

“I never had an interest in German or Germany previous to college,” he said, “but a lot of people associate engineering with Germany. They’re very efficient. After my time there, I’m quite comfortable with the language, though still not perfect.”

During the five months that Muratori spent studying at the Technical University of Braunschweig in the fall of 2007, he was exposed to new cultures and observed how German and American academic strengths differ.

“I found that Americans are a bit more well-rounded,” he said. “The German school system concentrates on some subjects earlier than we do here, so they might have a little more technical knowledge than most college-level Americans, but I would say that Americans can write better reports and have stronger communication skills.”

Following his classroom experience in Germany, Muratori worked for six months at Continental Corp., an automotive electronics company in the middle of the Black Forest in the city of Villingen-Schwenningen. The division had been purchased from Siemens several weeks before he began work.

“I worked mostly on GPS [global positioning system] analysis as a test engineering intern,” he explained. “My boss had a truck that he drove around the Black Forest, and I had to optimize the GPS reception inside of the truck’s tolling system, making sure that as he drove through tall forests and mountainous terrain that the system worked well in all of these areas.”

Muratori’s GPS work included testing and analysis of various types of antennas, which he hadn’t studied much about before going to Germany. But it soon became a subject of great interest, so much so that he has been hired by Applied Radar Inc. at Quonset Point for a job he will start soon after graduation.

The company, a defense contractor, makes phased array antenna systems that Muratori said “simulate large scanning antennas with an array of fixed, electronically controlled smaller antennas.” He expects to start out doing programming, but he hopes to eventually work on the design of new antenna systems.

A former high school soccer and tennis player, Muratori wants to work his way into a project management position, and perhaps go to graduate school to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering with a concentration in antenna design.

“But I want to learn the ins and outs before I get to that,” he said. “My main goal right now is to lay the groundwork and get some good experience. It’s why I’m going to work first before graduate school.”