Hi, I’m Andy
I am a senior Mechanical Engineering student at Northeastern University. This website is intended to serve as a portfolio for my design and engineering work. I have extensive hands-on engineering experience, including three R&D co-ops and many projects for Northeastern’s rocket club. I know how to work real problems from start to finish. I am not afraid to wrestle with any challenge, regardless of whether I have ever seen anything like it before. Arriving at a clear understanding of everything surrounding an engineering problem is the most gratifying thing that I can imagine. Whether it is design, manufacturing, testing, implementation or the math informing all the decisions along the way, I can figure out how to make it happen. I love to get my hands dirty.
Growing up, I spent much of my time exploring the beaches and tidal inlets of Cape Cod on foot and by boat. As an engineer, I love sailing small boats because almost everything that happens has a clear physical explanation. Every move you make has an impact, since your weight is significant compared to the other forces acting on the hull. The trick is to understand the physics of the sail, the hull, and the ocean well enough to predict what will happen and control it if you can or stay ashore if you won’t be able to stay in control. This combination of theory and practice is my favorite part of both sailing and engineering, and it is the common thread in all my work as an undergraduate.
Sailing small boats and exploring the beaches of Cape Cod has also given me a deep appreciation for the uncontrollable power of the ocean and its great potential to support life or to destroy it. I like sailing when small craft advisories are in effect, but a few uncomfortably close calls with rocks and hypothermia have taught me that the wind and the waves are much stronger than I am. On shore I see first-hand how the pounding surf erodes dunes by the foot every year – dunes that protect salt marshes teaming with nesting birds, fish, arthropods, and the small offspring of larger ocean creatures; dunes that protect infrastructure, roads, houses, and the people in them.
Understanding, preserving, and appropriately harnessing the ocean’s resources and physical power is essential in a world with a changing climate, collapsing ecology, and extreme weather. As an engineering undergraduate, the need for knowledge of the ocean and the technical challenge of operating in such a dynamic and frequently hostile environment is what has driven me to seek out opportunities to work on ocean instrumentation. I am currently applying to graduate programs in applied ocean science and engineering because they will prepare me to understand and address some of the most urgent problems facing our world. I am a problem solver, and I know I can contribute.
