Spotlights

#IAmAnEngineer: I’ve always had an appetite for both math and language, but for years I struggled to figure out how I’d balance these two things.

When I was a kid, I went to my older brother’s Lego League practices all the time. That’s really where I fell in love with the concept of building things that do something else.

I’m from a very small city in Turkey where my parents were physics professors at its only university.

Stanford was my second job out of college but I’ve been here 31 years – and every single one of those has been spent in SoE in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department.

#IAmAnEngineer: I work in biotech, where I make experiments more efficient and hands-off using automation and robotics.

After a childhood seeing loved ones with mental health issues struggle with incorrect diagnoses and testing out many different types of medications, I originally went to school for psychology to help advance our knowledge of mental health.

I think of myself as a pivot between university decisions and the school student services staff in the departments and the dean’s office.

#IAmAnEngineer: As an undergraduate I was passionate about math and physics, and I knew I wanted to do work that really impacted society.

One of the things that’s really important to me is working to support marginalized youth to build the technical confidence they need to feel empowered in pursuing a STEM education, or really anything they’re passionate about.

I’ve been at SoE for almost five years and I love my job. I’m a science nerd, a Star Trek fan, and I’m always questioning everything.

My path to engineering started when I was 9 and went to see the movie ‘Iron Man’ with my family.

I moved to the U.S. in 2014 from Tokyo, Japan, where I was a personal executive assistant to a CEO in the financial industry. It was a very different world from where I am now.

My job has always been a roller coaster – in a good way!

I’m the first individual to be a Career & Affiliate Services Officer in the Management Science & Engineering (MS&E) department — it’s been fun to shape the role and make it my own.

I’m the Shriram Center building manager, which means my team and I keep things running in the building.

#IAmAnEngineer Ever since I was little, I’ve been curious about how things worked — what’s going on in a washing machine, for instance, or how magnets move paper clips without touching them.

I started out as an undergraduate majoring in physics at the University of Science and Technology in China, but in my senior year I had a chance to come to Stanford, where I learned there was a whole field that uses materials science to solve practical problems, which I’m very interested in.

#IAmAnEngineer: I’ve been surrounded by engineering my whole life; both my parents are engineers, and I was born and raised in Houston.

#IAmAnEngineer: I’ve always liked research. I really became interested in both engineering and nanotechnology as a high school student when I had the chance to go to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for a program where different scientists presented their work every Saturday.

There’s not a lot of work being done on building habitats on other planets, but our Mars Team at the Stanford Student Space Initiative is interested in just this.

#IAmAnEngineer: I’ve always wanted to find solutions to problems that were really going to help society, like making sure people have access to affordable, reliable, clean drinking water.