Hello! My name is Luke Yuen, and I’m a sophomore Mechanical Engineering major and Engineering Design minor at Will Rice. My joy for tinkering stems from a class I took as a sophomore in high school, Introduction to Mechanical Engineering. I was able to formulate an idea and learn how to actualize it, which I found awesome.

I took ENGI 120 last spring, where my team and I built a physical therapy assisting hamstring stretch device for pediatric patients with cerebral palsy. Our aim was to create a safe stretching device to reduce the fatigue of physical therapists during a popliteal stretch required for these patients following a hamstring lengthening surgery. We used a hydraulic cylinder as a linear actuator to control the severity of the stretch, and it doubled as a viscous damper during the emergency release. It was enlightening to work on this project with my team, as I learned about hydraulics during our research and prototyping phases, which is a topic that I knew close to nothing about before. The ENGI 210 curriculum looks very exciting to me, so I’m looking forward to learning new skills, and strengthening ones I might already have.