Project Administration
The interdisciplinary nature of mechatronics offers a rich space for integrating the work of different teams and specialists. I have enjoyed opportunities to facilitate projects (partly due to my personal tendency to document and plan things closely) and hope to pursue this aspect of engineering further in my career.
Apical Robotics: New Venture Competition
UC Santa Barbara Technology Management (TMP) Program - Fall 2022 to Spring 2023
About the New Venture Competition: Since its inception in 1999, Technology Management's New Venture Competition (NVC) has continued to grow in popularity and quality and become an important and transformational educational experience at UC Santa Barbara. NVC is unique relative to many university business competitions in that it is open to students of all majors and levels at UCSB, and it requires participants to complete a rigorous eight-month program to develop, refine, and validate their businesses. The entire process involves a variety of preparation courses, workshops, and seminars led by an outstanding and committed group of faculty and industry mentors.
The Apical Robotics team participated in the 2022-2023 New Venture Competition, conceptualizing and pitching an inspection-as-a-service business based on the team's novel robotic technology for inspection of constrained industrial environments. Focusing our attention on inspection of chemical distillation columns, we developed a business plan by methodically working through an extended market discovery process with the help of our industry partners and the Technology Management Program at UCSB. My contributions were focused on establishing our market size through research and customer interviews and generating financial projections.
Apical Robotics received the People's Choice Award and the third place award in the technology push category in the 2023 NVC finals.
Project Management Case Study: DroneTech Engineering
Rice University, Engineering Project Management Specialization - Summer 2022
As a part of the Engineering Project Management Specialization offered by Rice University, I carried out all phases of project management (initiation and planning; cost, scope, and schedule development; risk and quality analysis) for a case study project by DroneTech Engineering, a startup developing autonomous aerial vehicles.
This work included preparing relevant documentation according to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), a few of which are included here. The emphasis of the program was placed on introducing students to project management standards and routines, as well as the best practices for quickly absorbing pre-existing management practices at companies.
Robotics Club: Submersible ROV Project
UC Santa Barbara Robotics Club, Fall 2021 to Spring 2022
The robotics club took on the objective of making a submersible remotely operated vehicle for the 2021-2022 year, with the objective of exploring the lagoon at UCSB. As the failsafe lead, I worked with my colleagues to coordinate the work of hardware and software teams, facilitate procurement, carry out risk assessment and mitigation, and provide design redundancies.
Some of my images from the year highlight out PVC body, the propellers and their controllers, and a custom test set-up for steady-state propeller force.
