Rebecca D.

Junior, BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering

For Rebecca, WPI’s project-based curriculum has allowed her to have a unique and life-changing experience every year of her attendance that she couldn’t have gotten at any other school:

Freshman year: Her project focused on the pros and cons of hydropower and water turbines’ negative effect on the environment, which is something she had been unaware of before starting.
Sophomore year: She designed a face recognition program for watching TV shows and movies.
Junior year: She went abroad to Hong Kong and got to assess the Smart City Initiatives in Kowloon East.

After those successes, Rebecca is looking forward to seeing what senior year brings. After graduation, she hopes to become a power engineer at a utilities company, a field she’s been working toward since high school.

Hometown

New York, NY

Faculty Mentor

Shamsur R. Mazumder, Assistant Teaching Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering

Achievements

Presenting to the Hong Kong Government on Smart City initiatives during my IQP
Joining Alpha Gamma Delta my freshman year helped me make amazing friends and grow as a leader – I’m now the president of my chapter!

Interests

Alpha Gamma Delta
Senior Tutor in ECE Department
Mentor on First Robotics Team 1735

8 am

Head to my first class of the day: Linear Algebra. Right now we’re working on matrices and systems of equations.

11 am

Spend a couple of hours before lunch working in one of the ECE labs in the Atwater Kent Laboratories on a project for my power systems class that simulates generators and transmission lines.

4 pm

Meet with some of the students in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Design class that I am TAing. I’m helping them with their project to build a successful prototype of a safety device that harvests energy.

6 pm

Bi-weekly meeting at Burncoat High School to volunteer with the First Robotics team I mentor. We’re working on a robot that tackles different terrain defenses for the competition in Worcester and Rhode Island.

9 pm

Back at the AGD sorority house for the night! I’ll hang out with my sisters, grade some papers, do my homework, and then off to bed.

My favorite thing about WPI is that we have the ''Work Hard; Play Hard'' mentality – we have our tough classes, but then we enjoy ourselves with hundreds of activities on campus.

I started at WPI as a very quiet person. But joining Greek life in my freshman year is the best non-academic decision I have made. I came out of my shell and made amazing friends throughout the whole Greek community.

The hands-on experience you get at WPI from the moment you step on campus is something that people don't even get until their junior or senior year at other schools.

WPI grads can adapt quickly and have amazing time management skills since our seven-week terms allow us to focus in more on our three classes at a time.