Stockton Rush's OceanGate had college-aged interns designing the submersible's electrical system: report

• OceanGate hired teenage interns to design the Titan's electrical systems, The New Yorker reported.
• "The whole electrical system — that was our design," the former intern Mark Walsh said in 2018.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush employed college-aged interns to design the electrical systems for the Titan submersible that vanished on June 18, according to The New Yorker.

The New Yorker reported Saturday that Rush ignored numerous safety warnings from experts and hired interns from Washington State University to work on the Titan.

"The whole electrical system — that was our design, we implemented it, and it works," the former intern Mark Walsh told Washington State University's college newspaper in February 2018.

Walsh graduated in 2017 with a degree in electrical engineering, according to the college newspaper. He started as an intern before joining OceanGate full-time as their electrical-engineering lead.

Walsh also told the college newspaper that he hired a few interns from his alma mater and was keen to hire more to join him at OceanGate.

Insider was unable to independently verify which part of the Titan's electrical system Walsh's cohort of interns worked on. Representatives for OceanGate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Walsh's claim that a group of interns had created the electrical system on the Titan submersible is the latest of several bombshell revelations about what was happening behind the scenes at Rush's company.

The ambitious seafaring company previously touted its partnerships with NASA, Boeing, and the University of Washington on the Titan's design. These claims were later denied by Boeing and the University of Washington, who said they did not work on the Titan submersible.

Washington State University said in a statement to the local daily newspaper the Everett Herald on June 22 that they did not "have an alliance with OceanGate."

"We are aware that some of our graduates have worked at OceanGate. To our knowledge, one graduate currently works there," the university added.

Walsh's LinkedIn page said he worked at OceanGate for two years before he left the firm in 2019.

Besides Washington State University, OceanGate was also taking in interns from Everett Community College's Ocean Research College Academy, per the Herald. However, the college stopped offering internships with OceanGate in 2019.

Ardi Kveven, the academy's executive director, told the Herald that "there was often a disconnect between the exploration community, which embraced pushing the envelope, and the more methodical scientific community."

Rush's previous comments on the Titan's development have come into the spotlight after multiple reports said that he ignored multiple safety warnings from experts.

All five passengers aboard the Titan, including Rush, were declared dead after the submersible imploded during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck on June 18.

Representatives for Washington State University and Everett Community College's Ocean Research College Academy did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.