Analytic Engineering Personal Statement

As a black male engineer, I will be among 3 percent of scientists and engineers in the United States. While this number is unbelievably small, that 3 is significant in an allegorical sense. Every since, I joined the robotics team in 7th grade, my interpretation of this statistic has been evolving. At the time, I was eager to be apart of a team to develop, code, and compete in the FIRST Robotics competition. This excitement was short lived; for as soon as I had joined the robotics team, I was one of several new students released from the team for lack of experience. Virtually, the ample 3 came to mean the doubt in my potential. Once, I was a freshman, I swiftly joined again, although I was shrugged off and unable to build the robot, I learned the ropes. By my senior year I became captain and with pride I lead the other 97 percent and representing the underrepresented. With this, I have led and developed many student run science

This summer would be the most challenging, but rewarding summer I have ever had. There I worked in the UCLA Optofluidics Systems Laboratory under Pei-Yu Chiou. There, I worked in I spent 8 weeks researching methods of how to develop a plastic polymer surface for micron sized oil droplets to be controlled and manipulated by an extremely powerful laser. Once there, I noticed that there were no black professors in the school of engineering that could be a role-model for my success. Halfway through my program, I came across a black male engineering grad student who mentored me to continued on the selective path of becoming a black engineer. While a lot of my time was spent in the library researching and deciphering useful information from scientific journal articles, I was able to design my own experiment and release my own scientific poster and lab report into the UCLA