Vic is the Mechanical Design Lead (MDI) and Executive Board member of Yonder Deep at UC San Diego. Their website states that “our goal is to be the first undergraduate group of students to design a 3D printed, low cost, modular and fully Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) for oceanographic and climate change research.” Her role as MDL “involves leading a design team…from a variety of engineering disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, and structural.” The team has begun developing Neptune, which will be deployed next year off the coast of Norway.

She has enjoyed her engineering courses both at the community college where she began her studies and here at UC San Diego. This includes material micro-structures, which she acknowledges many students find boring, as well as her math classes, even differential equations. A big difference that she appreciates here at UC San Diego is having access to large research labs.

Vic is considering a career in biomedicine, but is keeping her options open. To her, “engineering is deeply human” because engineers first and foremost design and fabricate products for people. She believes that engineers should constantly “be thinking about how what we make affects people.” She is enrolled in Earl Warren College.