Hi! My name is Nicole, and I’m a sophomore Electrical Engineering major at Sid. I went to high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where I participated in a FIRST Robotics Competition team and discovered my love for designing and building robots, which eventually grew into my passion for engineering.

At Rice, I’m involved in a number of academic ventures, including research with my professors, IEEE, and being a teaching assistant. I’ve also always been interested in the artistic side of things, particularly dance and studying how things move. I danced in at a preprofessional studio before I came to Rice, and I plan to continue that this semester with the Rice Dance Theater.

The project that I’m proudest of is the robot that we built in my junior year. That year, we won our regional championship and were finalists in our division of the world championship. As electrical and pneumatics lead, I built and wired the entire drive base, which allowed us to overcome obstacles on the field and have enough pushing power to thwart defenders.

In the future, and possibly during this class, I’d like to learn the skills needed to build a strandbeest.

It’s a wind-powered machine that looks like it “walks.” It’s completely mechanical, and the wind-power is only used to push the strandbeest along. In ENGI 210, I’d like to build a smaller scale strandbeest.