Meet Joe, Graduate Ambassador
When asked what he feels most passionate about, Joe looks sheepish and admits, “To make the world a better place to live in.” Then he earnestly adds, “I get out of bed, pursue my degree and go to work and all that stuff because all of those lead to the same thing – it’s so that I can establish myself in the working world, economic world and the research world so that one day I’m in a position to better help the energy crisis.”
Joe grew up on a conventional farm. After filling up the 500 gallon gas tank of a large combine [harvester] one day, he turned to his uncle and asked him what he would do when diesel fuel was no longer available to run the farm equipment. His uncle replied, “I will never have to worry about that.”
“He said it’s not his problem. Well, really, it is,” Joe argues. “I don’t want to pass the burden of the energy crisis down to my children or the next generation because it’s a huge problem. It’s going to make Black Sunday look like a walk in the park.”
For that reason, Joe is trying to focus his Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering towards energy efficiency. He is studying theoretical fluid mechanics and dynamics under Dr. Shashican. Joe is particularly interested in theoretical modeling and applying theoretical fluids and physics to energy technologies. “The current project I’m helping him with is … the effects of point vortices and how it affects a neutral buoyant body in viscous, compressible flows … and how the system interacts as a whole… What we want to do is eventually apply it to theoretically modeling of fish movement under water because the efficiencies that fish have under water are much greater than the efficiencies of any underwater vehicles man has made. That’s where my attraction to it is because it can be applied to make a dynamical system – from a human standpoint – more efficient.”
But what prompted Joe to choose mechanical engineering in the first place? He laughs and answers, “This is such a canned answer: to put it in a selfish term, to leave my mark upon the world… to make a difference in the world. I think that an easy way to do that is through engineering… My natural abilities in the sciences and math pointed me toward engineering.” Other engineering fields were “too rigid, too set in stone for me. Mechanical engineering is a broader discipline… more inclusive of all the other disciplines, I believe.”