What was your major and how did you become interested in it?

I chose to study mechanical engineering for two reasons; the most important one was that it is the broadest engineering, which gives me a very broad field of action. My aim is to pair it with an MBA in the future so that I can take a managerial role at my family’s company in Medellín. The second reason is that my father is also a mechanical engineer from the Facultad de Minas. He has influenced my life in many ways and inspires me. I still try to be like him.

Tell us about some of the projects you worked on during your studies.

I worked on some very interesting projects during my senior and junior years related to my favorite branches of mechanical engineering: mechanics and control systems. For control systems, I had to implement a compensator for a system that would use a cart controlled by a servo motor to balance a seesaw. In mechanics, I had to model a gearbox to be able to supply the specified mechanical advantage and design the size of each gear and pinion. It was a very open-ended project that required many calculations and diligence to the task.

While I did not work on a thesis, my senior design project had an international focus. I was part of a global design engineering team where we were presented with a list of issues in developing countries. From there, we had to choose a topic to work on. Our project involved designing a heat source to provide warmth to chicken coups in rural Nigeria where there is no access to electricity and cannot afford photovoltaic energy. After a great deal of effort, our team designed an attachment to the enclosure that our Nigerian stakeholder modeled for us. We were able to create a proof of concept in West Lafayette and felt it could make a noteworthy impact. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to solve the project to its entirety. Perhaps we can get the team together to complete the design!