Josh Vandervelde

I live just north of Berkeley, California, where I have enjoyed the last seven years of warm weather after growing up in the far northern reaches of New York. Engineering worked its way into my life during high school; constructing larger-than-life public art structures, working as a maker space student technician, and designing unwieldy mechanical arms for umbrellas consumed much of my time between classes. However, my other high school interests led me to Swarthmore College, where I continued to take a smattering of political science, creative writing, astronomy, and music classes alongside my engineering and mathematics requirements.

This liberal arts experience, while unconventionally paired with a science-intensive major, has helped me gain a much deeper understanding of the impacts engineering design has on the world outside of industry— from disaster management and environmental racism to deep-space measurement and science fiction inspiration.