Mona Lisa Delva made a promise to her mom: She will never use her technical expertise to build a network of self-aware supercomputers with plans for world-domination. “I’m fascinated by neural engineering, so I wanted to get involved with anything space age: Robocop, iRobot, you name it,” she says. “We were watching Terminator and my mom was like: ‘Mona Lisa, please don’t build Skynet!’”
Somewhere on the Calgary C-train, there is an electric panel with a little sticker that reads: 2NP17. Nick Pizzacalla knows: he put it there, after all. Nestled between the voltage number and breaker number, Pizzacalla’s initials are a lasting reminder of his contribution to the project. “It’s little things like that which make me love engineering," says Pizzacalla.
There was a time - not so long ago - that the eye was still a mysterious organ for Morgan Heisler. “I could have told you what a pupil was, but that’s about it,” says the biomedical engineering student with a laugh. This changed when she embarked on an VPR USRA-funded co-op placement working with diagnostic technology for glaucoma patients at Vancouver General Hospital’s eye care centre.
Fifth-year computer engineering science student Carmen Tang knows a thing or two about serendipity. In first year, she volunteered at OpFair, a student-led job fair in SFU’s Applied Sciences Building that attracts some of the biggest names in the high-tech industry. Next thing, Carmen was boarding a Seattle-bound plane for an all-expenses-paid Experience Microsoft trip.
For Bonnie Ha (’15), hard work paid off: the engineering science alumna graduated from SFU this fall with zero student debt. A recipient of the Dean’s Excellence Entrance Scholarship, Ha juggled a part-time job with co-op work terms with Amazon and IBM, while maintaining a high GPA.
Winner of the $80,000 Schulich Leader Scholarship 2015, Brendan Cottrell begins SFU this fall in the engineering science program. Selected by SFU for his high school academic prowess and exceptional community engagement, Cottrell is one of two high school applicants to receive a Schulich scholarship.
Sukhreet Kaur enjoys her co-op placement at Schneider Electric so much, she doesn’t want to leave. At the end of her eight-month work term, she was extended for an additional semester. This summer, she hopes to work part-time at the company while she continues her studies. “The best thing is that I work on different projects, so I’m always learning new things, and the people – they are so helpful,” she says.
Aakriti Arora describes her own SFU experience as transformational: from “an average student,” she says, to a quality assurance (QA) analyst with a top worldwide company. Along the way, she has built her confidence, expanded her skill-set and made a whole new network of friends. She joined TIO Networks – a bill payment services provider for major telecom, wireless, cable and network operators – in January 2014.
Engineering science graduate ('14) Scott Malfesi completed a four-month co-op work term as a firmware engineer intern with Tesla Motors in California in summer, 2014. "Tesla is a really exciting company that makes amazing products. I believe in their goals with electric vehicles and their approach of rethinking a lot of the industry standard way of doing things," he says.