By Adrienne Sylver
Not everybody can pinpoint a transformational event in their lifestyle. But Felipe Diaz-Cruz is fortunate to have seasoned two life-switching times ― equally though he was learning at FIU, where he finally been given bachelor’s and master’s levels in electrical engineering in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
“Two professors had been absolute video game-changers,” Diaz-Cruz says. “They observed a thing in me and gave me so lots of possibilities. None of what arrived later would have happened if I hadn’t come to FIU and achieved them.”
Diaz-Cruz, these days a climbing star at Texas Instruments (TI) in Dallas, Texas, is referring to Gustavo Roig, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Shekhar Bhansali, a professor and chief of the Bio-MEMS and Microsystems Lab/Team at FIU.
Colombian-born Diaz-Cruz came to the college because of its intercontinental flavor and exceptional electrical engineering method.
“I experienced Dr. Roig for an electrical circuits class, which is 1 of the very first electrical engineering programs in our key. I was pretty curious and pushed and I would often go to his business several hours and request queries,” Diaz-Cruz remembers. Roig invited the undergrad to his lab, wherever he taught him how to work with the elements of microsensors and circuits.
Later, in Bhansali’s lab, Diaz-Cruz got encounter with electronic chips utilised in the clinical industry, specifically as wearable and implanted units to diagnose and treat ailment.
“Several of Dr. Bhansali’s graduate scientists were performing on the development of biosensors that could detect pressure hormones and I was capable to shadow and learn from them. Ultimately, I designed adjustments to the sensors and started unbiased work.”
The expertise he received in the lab led to a summertime undergraduate investigate posture at Duke College, making it possible for him to come to be far more immersed in the microfabrication entire world.
His get the job done also resulted in a revealed paper, meeting presentations, and, in a roundabout way, his job at Texas Instruments. Challenged by Bhansali to build sensors compact enough to be transportable and to change the massive equipment currently being utilised to perform tests, Diaz-Cruz turned to present TI circuit cards as a setting up position.
“Thanks to the wonders of the internet, our group was ready to connect with just one of TI’s developers of circuit cards,” Diaz-Cruz says. “He was in one of TI’s design and style centers in Italy and listed here he was having the time to sit with faculty kids and educate us how circuit cards worked and support us to automate the method.”
Diaz-Cruz and his group were able to shrink the method from the dimensions of an more mature Personal computer to that of a property telephone.
Diaz-Cruz gave a presentation on the biosensor task at the 2014 Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Meeting. A TI engineer discovered he was working with the company’s technological know-how and invited Diaz-Cruz to an on-website task job interview. A couple of days later on, he got an offer you to sign up for the Management Advancement Rotational Software (LDRP) at Texas Devices.
“There’s a misunderstanding that TI is all about calculators,” Diaz-Cruz states. “But only 2 % of our company is calculators. We deal largely with electronic chips.”
Discovering all-around the environment
Just after getting his master’s diploma, Diaz-Cruz moved to Dallas. He spent a calendar year and a 50 percent of the LDRP there, doing the job in a manufacturing unit as an implant engineer, a team that discounts with the numerous elements of the implantation of impurities to silicone to alter its electrical homes, important for effectiveness.
Following, he moved to Malaysia, exactly where he was a product take a look at engineer in a TI assembly and exam plant in Kuala Lumpur. As aspect of the occupation, he also traveled to Japan, Singapore, Thailand and other countries.
The 3rd yr brought him back to Dallas as an analog technological innovation development engineer, the place he joined forces with a TI workforce situated in Bangalore, India, and with whom he collaborated to build enhancements to the company’s device simulation infrastructure.
He also attended the MBA software at the College of Texas at Dallas. Every single stage in the journey taught him new expertise and allowed him to operate with a diverse group of staff from around the globe.
When it was time for Diaz-Cruz to pick out an place of concentration for his subsequent occupation transfer at TI, he picked process integration because it melded every little thing he was most fascinated in, the in-depth technological facets from a product’s early enhancement to its dependability and producing.
“Everyone is turning out to be more familiar with digital chips as they are utilized typically in day to day items, together with cars, own, industrial and scientific equipment,” he clarifies. “Being equipped to lead and experience like you are undertaking a little something good for the world is significant to me.”
TI has taken discover of the younger engineer from FIU. He was lately elected to the TI Tech Ladder, a degree that recognizes his contributions and management to the organization and gives him even more possibility to mature as a chief and mentor.
“Only about 8 p.c of TI engineers are on the Tech Ladder,” he suggests.
He hopes to shift up the ladder to an elite degree.
Since mentors have played this kind of an critical section in his lifestyle, Diaz-Cruz encourages college students to get to out.
“Build connections with professors and graduate college students. Just converse and talk to concerns. And never be concerned to knock on doorways. Be part of a lab or a team, even if it is not a compensated occupation.”
All over college, he worked bar and restaurant careers to pay dwelling expenditures.
Diaz-Cruz’s curiosity was a thing that amazed Bhansali.
“The desire to request information past the apparent is alternatively unusual and a mark of a long term leader,” Bhansali claims of his previous pupil. “He was willing to go the further stage, rather than just accepting the performance variety of a chip, for instance. He wished to find out why the assortment was what it was and why it could not be unique.”
Analysis labs at FIU, Bhansali suggests, are the excellent opportunity for learners to learn their strengths and passions in a crew atmosphere, which qualified prospects to qualified achievement.
Now, when he’s not doing the job, Diaz-Cruz enjoys performing exercises and paying time with his lifetime partner Stephanie and their two sons, 3 and 1. They are anticipating a 3rd kid in September.
“The little ones are a box of surprises,” he suggests. “We really like to go on walks, go to the pool and perform with our puppy, Zoe.”
To hold his Colombian heritage alive, he is operating with his kids on their Spanish. He also coaches his oldest son’s soccer crew.