COLLEGE STATION, Texas — For Cadet Nathan Wagner, this summer is no vacation. Wagner is a senior engineering management major at the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He began his summer in Korea shadowing a platoon leader and an Apache helicopter unit before joining the Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT) for a summer internship. At TCAT, which is part of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), Wagner is working with Dr. Jim Wall in the Computing and Information Technology Division and Joe Gonzalez at Fort Hood to model the deployment of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. A native of Midlothian, Va., Wagner is researching how terrorists determine targets, organize and resource, construct, transport, emplace and select triggering mechanisms for various types of IEDs. The research Wagner is doing will help TCAT extend current Army simulations that are used to train soldiers at Fort Hood and throughout the Army. This internship gives Nathan a chance to see the other side — people interacting with the Army, Wall said. "It will expose him to the engineering process, and we¿ve given him a task that he can truly put his thumbprint on." TEES is the engineering research agency of the State of Texas and a member of The Texas A&M University System.
