Master’s in Mechanical Engineering 2017
Mechanical Engineering 2015
(Mechatronics)
A little bit about me…
Former Mech undergrad here, now a Mech grad student and TA! I’ve been through the whole Mech experience and managed to come out the other side in one piece, so if you have any questions I would be happy to chat. My current research is in acoustics, which dovetails nicely into my hobbies as an amateur musician and avid follower of Vancouver’s local music scene.
I wish I had known before I came…
I wish I’d been less intimidated by my professors early on in my degree – turns out they’re human too (surprise!). If you’re genuinely interested in the subject they’re teaching or researching, see if you can catch them before or after class and find some time to chat. (Also, speaking as someone who sometimes struggled in classes and is now a TA: if you think you need help, please come talk to us! We want to help. Really. Especially if you start early, and not the day before the midterm/final exam…)
I chose mechanical engineering because…
To be honest, it was a really hard for me to choose – I liked the idea of studying and creating physical, tangible things, but I also really enjoyed my introduction to coding and software in first year. In the end, I made a snap decision to apply for the Mechatronics option in Mech (which combines aspects of the two), and I haven’t regretted it since.
Mechanical engineering at UBC in one word…
Impossibletodescribeinoneword? (It is large; it contains multitudes.)
What I like best about my program…
I really appreciate the versatility and wide skillset I obtained in Mech – even though my current research topic isn’t directly related to most of what I studied in school, I still use it in my work every day – designing and 3D printing some custom fittings for my experimental apparatus, writing up a quick MATLAB script to automate my data processing, and so on. With a Mech degree in hand, you can end up in some fascinating places where you put your degree to good use, regardless of whether or not your job title literally has the words “Mechanical Engineer” in it.
Favourite moment/memory so far…
During undergrad: traveling the world with UBC Thunderbots and our soccer-playing robots! Every year, during the school term we spent countless weekends and evenings working on building and testing our robots, leading up to the RoboCup competition in the summer. The week-long competition is held in a different place every year – in the 3 years I spent on the team, we visited the Netherlands, Brazil, and China. It was an amazing experience to see very different parts of the world, bond with my teammates, and meet other students from around the world who are just as passionate about engineering and robotics.