Students

Tomoya Otsuka is a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at UC Davis. After graduation, he plans to attend graduate school either in Sweden or Switzerland to focus on developing fast and efficient railway systems and learn more about sustainable engineering.

As someone who has seen much of the world after living in Japan and Australia for 15 years before coming to the U.S., Tomoya will always remember the memories he made at UC Davis.

Reiko Yoshizawa is finishing her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at UC Davis. After graduating, she will start a full-time job as a manufacturing engineer at the medical device company Penumbra.

One of her favorite memories from her time at the College of Engineering was building a gearbox that could carry a couple of textbooks up a ramp in her mechanical design class. Reiko and her friends faced a myriad of challenges when manufacturing and assembling the components, but she enjoyed the work and it was rewarding to see the final project in action.

Reca M. Caballero is a biomedical engineering student at UC Davis and is our 2020 M.S. Ghausi Medal award winner. The award, named for former College of Engineering dean, Mohammed S. Ghausi, is the highest honor bestowed upon a graduating senior in engineering.

Some of Reca’s favorite memories from the College of Engineering was representing the Biomedical Engineering Society and volunteering at Decision Day.

Melissa Johnson is graduating with degrees in mechanical engineering and design. After graduation, she plans to start working in either design consulting or STEM education, ideally at a job where she can use both of her degrees, before returning to higher education to get her master’s.

Louie Zhong is a fourth-year materials science and engineering student at UC Davis and plans to continue his research as he pursues his M.S. in materials science and engineering at Stanford University after graduation.

A big part of Louie’s UC Davis experience was being an undergraduate researcher in assistant professor Roopali Kukreja’s lab, where he studied how materials behave on ultrafast timescales as short as a picosecond. Their research and materials can potentially be used for next-generation memory devices, which will have a major impact on computing down the line.

Kyle Sager is graduating from UC Davis with a degree in mechanical engineering and will be moving on to work for Phillips 66 in Rodeo, as a project engineer. Some of the best advice Kyle received as an engineering student was to not shy away from a challenging problem.

“Engineering is all about problem solving and the best way to do this is actively trying to solve it. With the proper amount of interest and dedication to the subject at hand, it is impressive what you can learn and achieve,” said Kyle.

Ian Phillips is a fourth-year materials science and engineering student finishing his undergraduate degree at UC Davis.

Becoming an engineer was a natural choice for Ian. He grew up working on cars with his dad, giving him a love of hands-on work and problem solving that he’s taken with him throughout his time at UC Davis, from studying semiconductors and ceramics at UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to teaching shop tools at the UC Davis D-Lab.

Harshita Kaushal is a fourth-year UC Davis student finishing her undergraduate studies in computer science and engineering. After graduation, Harshita will be a software engineer for Optimizely, a startup in San Francisco that provides A/B testing through their platform.

Felipe Valdez is a mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate student at UC Davis. After graduation, he is starting his full-time position at NASA.