I was raised in the LA area but moved to Glendale, a 15 minutes north of downtown when I was in the 2nd grade. I am currently in the graduate program in Mechanical Engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and received my bachelors in Aerospace Engineering. My mom is a travel agent and, at one point, worked near LAX. Seeing those planes approach the airport and trying to guess their associated airline was a fun little game I used play, so when it came time to declare my undergrad major, that little game popped into my head so I guess you can say that inspired me to become an aerospace engineer. Now, as I head into my first year of grad school, I am looking to specialize in thermo-fluids applications. This involves figuring out how to cool pretty much anything, from car engines to the CPU on a desktop.

So far I’ve been involved with iFixit for about 4 months now. I started in August 2020 so December will be my 4 month anniversary. By far one of the most friendliest and accommodating work environments I’ve been in!

When I young, high school years and my first year in community college, I wanted to be an economist with the hopes of being a wall street trader/stock broker. I remember being inspired by the movie The Pursuit of Happiness and seeing Will Smith’s success from homelessness to becoming a stocker broker made me want to follow his footsteps. Admittingly, not the greatest idea to let your career path be decided by a movie, but I wasn’t really sure what else was out there. Now that I transitioned into engineering, I love it and couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. Eventually, I hope to work for a energy-conscious company who aspires to revolutionize an industry. Being energy efficient and conscious is something that I always had a affinity for, so that is something when working for someone long-term. Down the line, I aspire to become a VP of engineering or some sort of executive/director managing multiple teams to work towards a common goal.

Since transferring to Cal Poly, I’ve been involved with the school’s SAE team, Cal Poly Racing. I owe a lot of my skills and knowledge to that club. It is where I was introduced the world of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and 3D computer aided design (CAD) modeling. So far, I am proficient in STAR-CCM+ and ANSYS Fluent CFD packages alongside SOLIDWORKS as a CAD tool. I am also decently good in some programming languages such as Python, C++, and Java and have recently been interested machine learning. I also work with my hands, having manufactured parts using a lathe and mill, apart from wood working tools and basic hand-held tools.

One of the projects that I designed was a drag reduction system (DRS) for the SAE car. The whole point of the project was to reduce the vehicle’s drag on the straights, thereby shaving off time in acceleration and autocross events. It took a lot of late nights and caffeine to even get a model working. It was a massive undertaking because of its multi-disciplinary nature; aerodynamics, controls, kinematics, and electronics were all involved. The project was not put on the car unfortunately, but I learned a lot in the process such as failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), solidifying my CAD and CFD skills, effectively communicate with others, dealing with sponsors, and effective time management.

In terms of repair background, I proclaim myself as a DIYer, but haven’t had a lot of experience undertaking major repairs. I can change the oil in my car, repair headphone wires (given enough solder and YouTube videos), fix the leg on my chair, and, more recently, fix the screen on my iPhone (albeit with a lot of help). Given my automotive background, I want to learn more automotive repairs in future.

Some awards that I’m most proud of is being a student of the month for 3 consecutive years, from 3rd to 6th grade. Apart from that, I’ve managed to somehow get dean’s list for 2 quarters but I was just lucky!

I still participate in the SAE team, providing my knowledge to the aerodynamics team and helping out however I can. I also technically belong to the aerospace engineering honors society, Sigma Gamma Tau on campus. I also am part of the Society of Hispanic Engineers (SHPE) at Cal Poly.

For fun, I like to go on hikes, run, and play tennis when there’s someone to play with. I also recently got into surfing over the summer.

Fun fact, I was a multi-instrumentalist when I was young, being able to play the drums and trumpet, not at the same time though.