Keysight Awards Summer Internships and $5,000 Scholarships to HBCU Engineering Students

At Keysight Technologies, we set out to enable our customers to connect and secure the world with their innovations. To excel on our mission, we’re powered by a diverse and talented global team—and we continue to lay the groundwork to attract diverse talent among future generations.

Keysight was recently recognized as a top supporter of HBCU engineering schools, according to U.S. Black Engineer Magazine. We believe that it’s important to stay connected to underserved communities through STEM and support the school-to-career pipeline. This year, Keysight donated $550,000 in equipment and software to Hampton University School of Engineering and Technology. We were also a sponsor of the Inclusive Engineering Consortium, an external organization aimed at fostering education advancement in HBCUs. 

More recently, Keysight awarded $5,000 scholarships and internships to three engineering students enrolled at a historically Black college or university (HBCU). We’re proud to acknowledge our 2021 HBCU scholarship and internship award recipients.

Winstina Cole

Winstina Cole, from Maryland, is a senior at Hampton University. Interested in engineering since a young child, she was “always trying to build things without the directions,” she explained. In the future, Cole hopes to pursue a career where she can use her engineering skills to help improve the Earth’s health, which is a passion of hers. She dreams of being an electrical engineer and helping to address challenges with pollution and transportation.

This past summer, Cole interned in hardware engineering with  Keysight’s High Frequency Measurements team, where she worked on designing circuits. She said that simulating and building circuits has been so rewarding. “It’s so fulfilling seeing something I’ve been working on come to life and knowing that I’ve reached my goal,” she said.
“This has been such an amazing summer, and throughout it all, I’ve felt so included,” Cole added. She explains that it was evident to her since day one on the internship that it is very important to Keysight for everyone to feel included. “I didn’t feel like an intern,” she said. “I felt like I was working just like everyone else, getting invited to all the meetings and being called on to share my thoughts.”

Abdelkarim Suleiman

Abdelkarim Suleiman, a senior studying computer engineering at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, was first introduced to Keysight while learning how to use the equipment in his school’s engineering lab. Raised by a father who is an electrical engineer, Suleiman, of Greensboro, N.C., has been learning a lot about the ins and outs of engineering over the years and has developed a curiosity about the industry. He is particularly interested in automotive and has a competitive drive, as he and his dad have engaged in many math competitions and challenges over the years.

This summer with Keysight, Suleiman was placed within our America’s Sales Organization as a Field Engineer intern—a position he likes to think of as “an engineer with entrepreneurial skills.” Suleiman especially enjoyed an opportunity to go on a sales call with a Keysight Field Engineer and help secure a lab upgrade deal. For Suleiman, this was rewarding because he had met his objective, but also because he felt he was truly making an improvement in the lab experiences for other students.

As an intern for Keysight, Suleiman continually felt like a valuable team member and connected to all his colleagues, even while he and so many others were working remotely. “Everyone has been so helpful and has made my experience so great,” he said. He’s especially looking forward to continuing the relationships with other Keysight interns that he met over the summer. “It will be interesting to keep in touch and learn from each other’s perspectives going forward,” he said.

Cameron Harris

HBCU roots run deep within Harris’s family, with both his mother and sister also attending an HBCU. The Hampton University senior, born and raised in Baltimore, Md., was attracted to his college because of its richness in history and its track record for providing fair and equal access to education. Growing up, Harris was interested in STEM from a very early age, continually taking things apart and building them back together as a child. “I was the type of kid who would take a toy car apart to see how it works and then put it back together,” Harris said. Influenced by his father, an electronics technician in the Navy, Harris has a strong interest in RF. 

Harris was especially excited to be placed as an intern in Keysight’s RF/NPI (New Product Introduction) team this past summer. He explained that working on a new product introduction team for wireless devices was “literally a dream.” He enjoyed every step of the process, from creating and developing the first conceptual basis of a product to readying it for production and extending beyond that into its lifecycle and product support. 
The highlight of Harris’s internship experience: working on test automation. “It involved the best of both worlds, software and hardware,” Harris said, “providing a full view of a product’s functionality and how to leverage tests to make sure it’s working.”

In the future, Harris hope to pursue a career in electrical engineering and find ways to give back by exposing others to STEM who might not necessarily have had the opportunity. “Having that support system is so important,” Harris said. “I thank Keysight for providing me with a foundation and support that will help shape my future.”

Keysight is committed to partnering with HBCUs in many ways, from assisting with infrastructure, including laboratories, to providing internship opportunities, scholarships, and mentoring. To gain a closer look at our initiatives, read about additional measures we’re taking to advance engineering programs in partnership with HBCUs.