My name is Julio Sanchez and I am a Junior Mechanical Engineer from Hanszen College. I have been a member of Rice Electric Vehicle for two years and currently serve as a Junior Class Representative at Hanszen.

The thing I have made that I am most proud of is my ENGI 120 project. For that class, I was made part of a team of freshman engineering students which was tasked with creating a carbon fiber wheel rim for the Rice Electric Vehicle. We only succeeded in creating 1/8 of the rim, but the experience was valuable and allowed me to get experience working with engineering teams. It also made me an expert in laying up carbon fiber, a substance which I had never worked with previously.

I’d be happy to build a model car in the future. I was always fascinated by the clay sculpted models used by automotive designers in the past, and building a scale model with moving mechanical parts that looks like the elegant sculpted models would be an interesting challenge.

One thing I am looking forward to learning in ENGI 210 is CADing. I have always wanted to learn to use CAD software, and have attempted to teach myself multiple times. But it always got to a point where I felt stumped by the depth and complexity of the CAD programs, so I always gave up. I feel like being made to use it in a class for a graded project would increase my motivation to learn.