After leading her students through a series of kinetic warmup exercises, Tori Barrington turns off the music and announces the night’s first dance moves.
Javier Guerra, a mechanical engineering student, decided to take the elective beekeeping course mostly because his senior project seeks to help a wounded veteran, Alejandro Jauregui, who makes his living as a beekeeper.
Unable to move at the bottom of a Big Sur cliff, Alex Fung patiently waited for help, coordinating his breathing rhythm with the sound of ocean waves.
While preparing for his own odyssey, Victor Glover kept a journal detailing conversations with astronauts who preceded him in space.
One of 70 students and faculty in the University Union audience, Dionna Odom listened to Victor Glover’s passionate speech about the need for more diversity at Cal Poly and thought, Wow — he’s got a gift.
A young toy rocket enthusiast at the time, 11-year-old Rich Murray watched Neil Armstrong plant his foot onto the moon in 1969 and envisioned his own future.
Standing in knee-high water beside his team’s senior project, mechanical engineering student Jacob Davis pumps a fist in the air and lets out a celebratory cheer. “We’re all super happy that it’s floating right now,” he says.
It might seem surprising that the co-founder of the world’s largest game developing event didn’t have access to a computer growing up. But as a child in the Iranian capital during the Iran-Iraq War, Foaad Khosmood and his family were more focused on survival than computer games.
For incoming students, the computer engineering program’s transformation to department status was visually evident even before fall classes began, when more CPE faculty were available during Week of Welcome events. And as the school year continues, those students will likely notice more changes, which are expected to help develop a greater sense of identity while allowing the department a greater ability to adapt to rapid industry changes.
In 2016, several amputees, covered in retroreflective markers, began exercising at the Human Motion Biomechanics Lab for a 3-year study.
In 1996 when David Rosa (Mechanical Engineering, ’89) was hired as one of the first engineers for Intuitive Surgical, a newly formed company dedicated to advancing surgery using robotics, he knew he had an opportunity to make a difference.
When Ed Burnett (Aerospace ’83, ’85) was hired by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. through a co-op his sophomore year, he didn’t know he would have a hand in solving seemingly unsolvable challenges. Retiring after 38 years with the company, he still serves as a Lockheed Martin Senior Fellow, emeritus on a part time basis.
When surfer Sarah Taylor rode to the Pismo Beach shoreline on an all-terrain wheelchair, it was just the first major test for an interdisciplinary senior project designed to help wounded vets.
When Sarah Griess was a senior in high school, her grandfather’s heart began to race erratically, threatening to deprive the rest of his body from life-sustaining blood.
Standing next to an applause sign he engineered himself, Elliott Hunter begins his virtual show with some of his most time-honored tricks, making cards magically appear from his hands and mouth.
When Robert Sakamoto (electronic engineering, ’57) attended Cal Poly, his drive to build a better future helped him overcome many obstacles.
Passion is a word both George and Tonny Murray lived by.
When Katie Fleischer earned her women and gender studies degree from Smith College last spring, her graduation ceremony represented a notable achievement for herself and her parents, Amy and Paul.
