I currently work at Peterbilt Motors Company in Denton, Texas, as an Electrical Design Engineer in the Chassis and Powertrain Electrical Group. I also serve in the United States Army Reserves as a Biomedical Equipment Specialist. I came to the United States in 2009 to visit my family when my father was teaching at UNT College of Music, and at that time I visited the College of Engineering at UNT Discovery Park. I was so impressed to see the amazing facility of Discovery Park with its strong faculty. I was thrilled to see the various resources the UNT main campus has to offer for its students including the incredible fitness and recreation center as well as the quiet and resourceful Willis library. After that tour, I decided to go to the graduate school at UNT.

I joined the MS program in Electrical Engineering in 2013. The Electrical Engineering Department at UNT has great professors such as Dr. Murali Varanasi, Dr. Oscar Garcia, Dr. Shengli Fu, and Dr. Xinrong Li. I had the wonderful opportunity to work closely as their student and as well as their Teaching Assistant during my time as a graduate student. I was also very lucky to receive mentoring from Dr. Varanasi who has such great experience and is a very reputable professor in the field of Electrical Engineering. For my thesis project, I developed a working prototype to execute pre-trip inspections on Peterbilt trucks using a drone that is autonomously controlled by a cellular phone using an algorithm and an android application. While pursuing my master’s degree, I also served as a project member for the Smart Emergency Response System led by Dr. Shengli Fu and Dr. Yan Wan. My work on this project included indoor drone navigation, virtual GPS simulation on Google Earth, and participation in the Global City Teams Challenge Expo in 2015 at the National Museum Building in Washington, D.C.. The Electrical Engineering Department at UNT is like a family to me where I still work with the faculty on collaborative projects. I would like to thank Peggy Foster and Jason Mieritz for their logistical and administrative help for all the students in the department.

UNT provides numerous opportunities for its students to receive industrial exposure as well as employment in top firms by hosting campus-wide career fairs every academic year. In the summer of 2014, I was an Electrical Engineering Intern at Peterbilt Motors Company, a leading trucks manufacturer in the automotive industry, which provided me with insight into the industry and experience that led to my employment.

I would like to thank Dr. Shengli Fu for his guidance and advice during my time as a graduate student. I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Miguel Garcia-Rubio, who was the Associate Dean of Operations at the time and who recruited me into the Master’s program at UNT, for continuing to provide me with professional mentorship.