Four young women—three of them already employed in their engineering fields—are part of the biggest graduating class to date in Mechatronics Systems Engineering (MSE), now officially a school at Simon Fraser University.

The school will see 44 students graduate during the Faculty of Applied Sciences Convocation ceremony this morning (starting at 9:45 am). Many have already landed jobs locally or internationally.

Armaghan Mogouei is working as a project engineer at General Motors in Pontiac, Michigan. She started SFU as an engineering physics student in 2008 and transferred into MSE the following year.

“The program enabled me to learn in three different engineering fields and engage them into one,” says Mogouei, who will join graduates at the convocation ceremony today.

Student Marianne Siglos is using her MSE skills in a job at Weir-Jones Engineering in Vancouver, where she is an Engineer in Training (EIT). A former SFU varsity wrestler–she was a CIS national champion in 2007 and placed 7^th in the world the same year, and was a NCWA North American champion in 2008–Siglos is enjoying working in a range of fields, from electrical, to mechanical, to data analysis.

Her father earned his engineering degree in the Philippines and when varsity wrestling brought her to SFU and its TechOne program, a friend introduced her to the field and she transferred into mechatronics as one of its first students. She graduates with majors in MSE and SFU’s Interactive Arts and Technology program (SIAT) and while her focus on studies led her to drop wrestling, she continues to play Division 1 soccer in Burnaby.

 Tanminder Rai is employed at PMC Sierra in the firmware department. Earlier, her co-op term in SFU’s Functional Materials Engineering lab gave her a taste of research as she cooked up a mixture of silver and other organic ingredients to create a new type of flexible nanowire—thinner than a 100th of a hair’s width and only seen with an atomic-force microscope.

Rai, of Surrey, and fellow student Paolo Dantes took a unique recipe for the wires that had been developed at the lab and refined it for use in radio-frequency (RF) antennas.

Along the way they made some significant discoveries related to “stretching” these antennas—and even though still undergrads, had their research published in April in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Electron Device Letters.

“It’s one of those accomplishments I can look back on in the future and be proud of,” says Rai.

The school has graduated nearly 100 students in the six years since inception and its programs, based at the Surrey campus, continue to be highly sought after.

Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries.

Contact:
Marianne Meadahl, PAMR, 778.782.9017; Marianne_Meadahl@sfu.ca

Photos: http://at.sfu.ca/iUPDly

Story credit/ SFU Public Affairs and Media Relations