For my second co-op, I worked at a biomedical company, with my primary focus being on designing equipment and machinery to automate the manufacturing process. This involved more than just mechanical work, since for something to be automated it would normally have electrical components and some sort of programming. Because of this, I was able to be involved and get experience in more than one discipline. This seemed to be common for most of the mechanical engineers there. While there were a good number of employees that specialized in other disciplines, such as electrical, systems, and optics engineering, every mechanical engineer did work related to those disciplines as well. Almost every mechanical engineer, at least while I was there, was involved in programming and wiring.
In terms of actual work, this was very useful since everyone could provide insight into a problem that might be multidisciplinary. This also means that supervisors could be rather flexible as to who to assign to each individual project. The work that I did and what most people did then, would most likely be described by Leavy as transdisciplinary, since it was problem-centered and generally evolved to include more than one discipline. Since my concentration in mechanical engineering is mechatronics, which is many times defined as the blend on several disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, software, this is exactly the work I could see myself doing after graduating.
