Outstanding students from each discipline in the School of Engineering are recognized by the faculty of their department for academic excellence and notable contributions to the department and the school.
Congratulations to our graduating students!
What's Next: Visit UC Merced Commencement
Alex has been admitted to the MS program in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis. He will begin after his MACES internship this summer. Alex credits Professor Sun for giving him the idea to consider graduate school.
I chose UC Merced because it was a smaller campus but was growing at a fast pace. The opportunity to get involved into ones area of interest is very easy here at UC Merced. Also, the people who are here are just like me, so it feels like home when I am here.
Since I was a little kid I always had an interest in cars. Movies like The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift made this interest grow even more. I though cars looked and sounded cool from the outside, but I would always be confused whenever I would look at the engine bay, and furthermore understanding how the car worked. Mechanical Engineers are the people who design these vehicles and have and active role in that, so for this reason I chose Mechanical Engineering.
My immediate family are my biggest motivation and inspiration. My father is the most hardworking person I know without a doubt, and NEVER complains. My mother never fails to remind me what is important in life and never stops when it comes to providing for my sister and I. My sister has always had my back and has been my mentor since I can remember. Since my sister was a Senior when I was a first year, she helped me get acclimated into college life very quickly. Despite not knowing the flow of life of the US, my family made it happen under any circumstances, so I know that I can too.
I made many friends who are also Mechanical Engineering students. Staying up late to study or work on homework in the SRE building will always be a good memory to look back on. In addition, I enjoyed my time as a Resident Assistant where I got the opportunity to help incoming student or 2nd years with things I wish I would've known at that time.
This summer I will be working as an Intern for PepsiCo as a Supply Chain Engineer Intern. After, I hope to get hired on by them or look for an industry job in the automotive space. I believe at some point I will want to pursue a masters or a PhD, so we'll see where life takes me!
I feel like I have grown a lot here at UC Merced. Through the different events, jobs, classes, etc. I have been able to challenge the way I think and have changed the way I act as a result. Experiencing a year without people due to COVID put into perspective what life is like, which made me appreciate the opportunities when they are there. I say this because once COVID hit many clubs on campus and other activities were halted and some have not made a comeback, so it is important to take advantage of the opportunities when they are there.
I chose UC Merced because I saw the potential for the school to offer great opportunities that wouldn't be as available at otherschools. Since it is the newest UC school, it has new equipment for labs and brand-new buildings for classrooms and dorms. The campus is very beautiful,and the student community here was very friendly and accepting. I wanted tocome here because I wanted to take advantage of all of these amazing attributes to help me grow academically and socially.
Throughout my academic life before college, I was always interested in STEM topics and enjoyed solving problems whether they were physical or on paper. I wanted to become an Engineer because I liked the type of problems they worked on and the industries that they worked in. I am a huge fan of the Aerospace, Energy, and Transportation fields. With all thatin mind I did not originally know what engineer I wanted to become because I had an interest in each general area. To compromise, I chose Mechanical Engineering because I would gain knowledge in many different areas of engineering which would help me discover what career path I want to follow when I graduate.
My inspiration for doing all of this hard work and dedication would have to be because of my parents and my brother. All of the life lessons and stories that have been told to me from my parents remind me how lucky I am to be in the situation that I am in today. They have given me so many opportunities and I want to do my best to make them and myself proud. Me and my brother have been competing for as long as I can remember whether it’s in sports, in academics, or in music. We have a strong sibling rivalry and even though he is better than me at some things, it just motivates me to get even better and to surpass him. In school I have had some great mentors who helped me throughout my time here at UC Merced. There are many TA's who have helped me tremendously at office hours and professors who have helped me understand difficult topics. Of all of those people, the onethat stands out to me would be Professor Ashlie Martini. She has helped me a lot with the projects that I have been working on and has helped me apply the skills I have learned in the classroom to solve complex problems. Without a doubt she has helped me grow the most since I started college.
My most memorable academic experience here at UC Merced would have to be my freshman year when I absolutely failed my first physics midterm. In high school I would pay attention in class, not study, and getting A's on my tests. Getting this result gave me a huge shock because I have never failed a test, not in high school, middle school, or elementary school which caused me to become laser focused on my schoolwork. After that 1 midterm, I went to office hours every week, completed my homework 1 week in advance, and studied like crazy for the exams. Because of all that hard work, I ended up acing the rest of the midterms and the final, which got me an A in the class. This experience taught me that working hard and putting in the extra time to learn something is how I can become successful in any task or project that I want to complete.
After I graduate, I plan to enter the job industry as an entry-level Mechanical Engineer. The short-term goal is to work in either the aerospace, energy, or transportation fields and gain experience from the projects I work on. In tandem I would like to pass the FE and EIT exams as soon as possible so that I can work in more qualified positions, eventually working my way up to getting my engineering PE license. In the long term, I would like to eventually work with NASA on planet exploration projects or help develop technological systems that can help minimize global warming.
When I first came to UC Merced, I was very shy, introverted, and typically had a difficult time initiating and continuing conversations. However, when I moved into the dorms my freshman year, I made the decision that I would break out of my shell and improve my social skills. I am so happy I made that decision because I have made so many great friends and have met so many cool people that I would've never met otherwise. I can now start and hold conversations and speak to people with confidence. If it wasn't for the amazing UC Merced students in my freshman class, I would not be where I am today and I am glad that I was able to grow not just academically but socially as well. The memories that I have made during my time at UC Merced were amazing and I can't wait to see what the future will hold.
UC Merced offers accessibility and mobility. Whether that be social, financial, or academic, it is a place of opportunity.
In my eyes, mechanical engineering is a way of organizing the physical chaos around to serve a purpose. And although I majored in mechanical engineering, it's not a stand alone major. Throughout my undergraduate time, I've found that we often work with those in computer science, electrical engineering, chemistry, and more.
I'm thankful for my family, friends and the professors throughout my academic journey. They've kept me grounded and I wouldn't be where I'm at at without them.
One of the most memorable moment was joining the Martini undergraduate research team. I was exposed to some of the unsolved engineering problems. It was an opportunity to understand how we dissect issues with no clear and perfect solution.
After graduating, I'll be heading down to LA for a tribology internship at The Aerospace Corporation. Then I'll be back to UC Merced to start the mechanical engineering PhD program.
UC Merced was actually a happy accident. I didn't initially plan to attend UC Merced but applied anyway and discovered that the school was by far the best fit for me.
As grandiose as it may sound, I believe that mechanical engineering gives one the tools to improve people's lives and the world. It has always been my hope that I can take these tools and enter the field of renewable energy and or sustainability.
My family, especially my mother and father, has been the greatest source of support and motivation through my entire academic career.
Capstone design has been my favorite academic project. Getting to collaborate with other engineering students and perform real world engineering has been a great learning experience and a blast.
In the long run, I plan on entering into sustainability and doing my small part to make the world more sustainable.
Julian would like to thank the University of California, Merced for recognizing his efforts in school, and providing another first-generation college student with a UC education. He would like to highlight that none of this would have been possible without the support from friends, family and department faculty. He enjoyed taking Thermodynamics from Professor Palk and Fluid Mechanics from Professor Rice and sends a shout out to Professor Brokowski for challenging him the most as an engineering student. Professor Martini had the largest impact on his future. As a fresh transfer student, he met with her after studying her research publications extensively and formulating a sheet of questions to ask. She agreed to add Julian to her research group right then and there during their meeting and he thanks her for the valuable research experience he gained. He is going to miss crossing Scholar’s Bridge to get to class and having picnics by little lake, and above all else, working on problem sets with friends on the SRE whiteboards. Nonetheless, Julian looks optimistically towards the future as he prepares to pursue his master’s degree developing novel cooling strategies at Stanford University.
Lucio Alfonso Moreno is a first-generation college student who attended UC Merced because he really wanted to make his abuela proud. Everything he learned about being a hard worker and showing kindness, came from her. He is grateful for everything his family has done for him. Lucio got into mechanical engineering through his high school robotics club, where he spent countless nights designing, prototyping, and building these machines to perform basic, sometimes complicated, tasks. He really enjoyed the whole process of learning how things work, that, and being good at math, made engineering a good fit. Lucio’s years in Merced were full and remarkable. He worked as a PALS tutor in mathematics. He enjoyed teaching his peers and seeing them succeed in their courses. During his undergraduate career, he was able to participate in two internships. The first with E&J Gallo Winery and the second with John Deere after being speaking to a recruiter at an NSBE conference. He even studied abroad in London during spring 2020 and highly encourage others to take part in it as well. After graduating Lucio plans on traveling a bit to other States and then getting a job focused on 3D modeling software to create or manufacturing products. He intends to complete a master’s degree in the future.
Patricia grew up playing a game she and her siblings called “inventions” in which the objective was to enhance the functionality of common household objects. This game served her well to imaginatively problem solve and pique her interest in understanding how ordinary phenomena works. Majoring in Mechanical Engineering was a natural extension of this curiosity. After graduation Patricia plans on working toward professional certification.
