November 2018 -

The International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is one of the largest interdisciplinary mechanical engineering conferences in the world. This year, it took place in Pittsburgh, PA (November 9-15, 2018). This was my first time attending IMECE, and I met a lot of great engineers and researchers from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. There I participated in the National Science Foundation Research Poster Competition. I had the chance to learn about several exciting research, ranging from impact welding to self-cleaning polymers for solar panels. There I had the chance to present our work on generative design models and designers’ bias, which was recently accepted in the Journal of Mechanical Design (see link).

Here are a few pictures of the event:

The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) 2018 National Convention celebrated in Cleveland, OH (November 7th-11th, 2018) was an extraordinary experience. Once again, I was honored to participate in the NSF Leverage Faculty Development Symposium supported by the NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) program. Thanks to SHPE and NSF for making this valuable learning experience a reality. I was able to network and meet with faculties and learn valuable lessons about how to succeed in my future career.

In addition, we had the chance to present our work on how deep learning generative models are used in the product development process and how designers are biased toward computer and human-generated designs at the Engineering Science Symposium (see presentation). This work is part of our research “Exploring biases between human and machine generated designs” in ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. I also served as a judge for the Engineering Science Symposium poster section.

Finally, during the career fair, I helped Penn State Applied Research Laboratory and the College of Engineering in the search and recruitment of minorities and underrepresented students that are planning to pursue a career in the STEM fields. During the fair, I had the privilege to meet, talk with, and advise several great students who are already doing some interesting research work.

Here are a few pictures of the convention: