Jones attended boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois. He then transferred to the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Goose Creek, South Carolina, where he completed his A-School and Power School, and earned his rating as a nuclear electronics technician, along with his certification to operate nuclear reactors from the Department of Energy.

After completing his training, he was assigned to the USS Louisiana Gold Crew, joining the ship in Hawaii. The USS Louisiana is the 18th and last ship of the U.S. Navy’s Ohio class of nuclear-powered fleet ballistic missile submarines.

Jones said his favorite Navy memories are “relaxing with his crewmates while in port.” He said when in port they would “party and try to destress from their time at sea.”

As a Louisville native, Jones said he chose UofL because it was close to home and would allow him to spend more time with his 9-year-old son.Ìę

“I am glad I chose UofL. It has made me feel welcome and valued,” he said.Ìę

As an older student, he was not sure how going back to school would work. He said it has been great and that he has made lots of friends. Jacob said spending times with his classmates gives given him “high hopes,” for the future as this generation of students moves into the workforce.

He plans plan to complete his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and thenÌę obtain a master’s degree to pursue a career as a machine learning engineer. He intends to use the machine learning skills he is gaining at UofL to help other disabled individuals lead more relaxed and full lives.

Jones called out two professors, Raymond Chastain, an associate professor in the Information Systems, Analytics and Operations Department of the College of Business, and Shamus McNamara, an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He said they were both extremely helpful during his first semester as he “adjusted to the environment and the workload” of the program.

UofL celebrates Jones’ service in the U.S. Navy and is proud to recognize the 247th birthday of the U.S. Navy on October 13.

In 2019, the electrical engineering student was invited to ride the StartupBus from Akron to New Orleans, but last month, she served as lead conductor of the competition’s bus. From July 27-31,Ìęshe coached and led 30 aspiring Black entrepreneurs as they traveled from her Cincinnati hometown to Austin, Texas.

Turner graduated high school in 2015, not completely clear about her educational path, but initially pursued international business and finance, following her mother’s path to corporate America. “But that just wasn’t me,” said Turner.

It took dropping out of school and spending time in her hometown with her grandfather to steer her in another direction.

“I hadn’t really spent much time with him and he was the only engineer that I knew of in my family,” said Turner. “Once I started talking about things that got me excited,Ìę engineering came into the conversation and I thought of electrical, because I always enjoyed knowing the electrical parts of how something is built, like toys. It was always gadgets or anything that you can kind of physically interact with and involves an electrical component, and so that’s what I wanted to spend time studying.”

In the next year and a half, Turner was anything but idle. She started by picking up prerequisites she would need to study engineering at a satellite location of University of Cincinnati. Outside of school, Turner’s independent study and proactive networking included a total immersion in the tech community.

“I had freedom and time and I joined many tech-related groups and listened to podcasts,” said Turner. “I learned about the StartupBus from a Facebook group I joined called Hackathon Hackers, who are interested in hackathons and coding and creating projects.”

Turner said the entrepreneurial aspect was appealing as well as the engineering. “I like freedom and doing my own thing,” she said. “I think engineering is a way to be able to build the technical skill set, which is important, but I’ve always been interested in the entrepreneurial side.”

For more preparation for engineering school, Turner sought out travel scholarships for tech conferences, including one to San Diego that introduced her to the world of big tech companies and to computer science students.

“It was there when I first felt that maybe I could do this. I could get into engineering,” she said.

The student experienced another major milestone in her quest when she connected online with a Google employee, Don Gerstle, an electrical engineering alum of Speed School, who offered to mentor her.

Turner’s insatiable curiosity and initiative was noticed, and she was invited to the StartupBus in 2019.Ìę

“I was on the Ohio bus, but the Advancing Black Entrepreneurs bus in that year, they left from Harlem, New York, and there was just something to say about the startup ideas generated on that bus,” said Turner. “They were more about building their communities, like financial literacy for minorities, for example, things that can really influence their communities. When those different, marginalized groups, have access to technology and education, a lot of the times that’s going into positively impacting their communities. That’s what I like about technology specifically for Black and brown communities is that it’s a tool to build those communities.”

From mixing and mingling with others from the Florida bus and the DC bus, Turner said she ended up spending time in the last stop city of New Orleans, where she met directors of StartupBus Europe and StartupBus Africa. It was that networking that led to her to ask about the ABE bus.

“The other conductors on the bus and me want to make this an amazing experience for riders. I am still actively recruiting to get University of Louisville students involved as well,” she said.

Going into her junior year, she said she is getting more comfortable at Speed School, where she applied in part to be close to her mother, who lives in Louisville and works at Humana.

“I was really nervous when I started here,” she said. “I started taking the bus in the mornings and getting to campus really early and just hanging out on the engineering floor. I thought if I stay in this place long enough, it’ll feel like home.”

Turner , and was a student worker for FirstBuild, the GE Appliances start-up. She said the best part of her Speed School experience so far has been getting involved in .

“Representation is important,” said Turner. “Before I went to Speed School, I developed a great network of Black and brown computer science students at these tech conferences. Being able to find that where I’m going to be spending most of my time at school is important to me, too and NSBE is a great avenue for that. It helped me find other students that look like me and made me feel comfortable.”

“You cannot imagine the feeling,” Elbasyouni said. “I didn’t sleep at all the night of the flight, I was up watching the feed all night.”

The engineer began working forÌę. in 2012, where he was selected to work with NASA on the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter project, which he did from 2014 to mid-2018 when he completed the flight hardware. He was elated to see it come to fruition in the first flight on April 19.

“Every day I had been waiting for the moment when it was going to fly,” he said. “It was incredibly exciting.”

Ingenuity since has completed two more flights, the latest on April 25.

The 42-year-oldÌęÌęalumnus (Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, 2004; Master of Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, 2005) also was part of the team that sent the Perseverance spacecraft to Mars in March.

From Palestine to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, it has been a long and sometimes difficult journey for Elbasyouni. Born in Germany, Elbasyouni moved with his parents and three brothers to Palestine at age six.

“One of my first memories was walking to school with a group of kids when suddenly they all ran into a house, and then I saw an Israeli jeep passing by, and I thought, ‘Wow I thought the military was there to protect us.’ It was a very different experience,” he said.

Elbasyouni attended a United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency School from grades one to nine, but often there was no access to school due to strikes or other civil unrest, so much of his early education was self-taught. Elbasyouni said his father, a busy surgeon, urged all of his children to be educated. Of his three brothers, two are electrical engineers and one is an orthopedic surgeon.

After coming to the United States, Elbasyouni went to college in Nebraska, Pennsylvania and the University of Kentucky before financial issues forced him to sit out a year and work odd jobs. Then he discovered UofL’s Speed School of Engineering.

“I always loved Louisville. In fact, I used to cheer for the Cards while at UK,” he said with a laugh.

Elbasyouni said he was impressed with Speed School’s program because it offered a hybrid study of hardware and computer and electrical engineering, something he wanted to pursue.

“When I transferred, I was welcomed with open arms from day one,” he said.

In addition, Speed School helped him financially with a scholarship award after the first year and a work/study job after his bachelor’s degree so he could afford to finish his master’s degree.

Finances were one of many obstacles for Elbasyouni to overcome, coming from a country where the income is a fraction of the United States, he said. Being from a Middle Eastern country unfortunately complicated other matters as well.

“After September 11, I was attacked delivering pizza to some drunk students,” Elbasyouni said. “It also meant it was harder to get a job because companies preferred U.S. citizens, so you had to apply twice as hard to find the right company who was interested in who you really are.”

Elbasyouni has not returned to Palestine since 2000, and last saw his family in 2011 in Germany, where they now reside and he can visit them as travel restrictions become less COVID-strict.

“I went for 11 years without seeing my mom,” he said. “That was tough. She used to cry every day.”

The engineer said he would like to return to visit his home country someday, but travel and the political conditions within the country have made it trickier than it used to be.

“I have good memories of growing up in the olive and orange groves, one reason why I live in Southern California now,” he said.

Coming to Speed School of Engineering in 2002 was a key turning point for Elbasyouni’s successful career path.

“I had incredible mentors there. I remember when I wasn’t even sure how I was going to pay for my master’s and they helped me get that job in the computer department,” he said.

In another case, Elbasyouni said he was struggling to pay tuition and needed $500 to finish the semester, and one of his professors offered to pay it himself.

“It was every single small thing like this,” he said. “I received mentoring and guidance from every professor I had. In my previous college experiences, I had nothing like that. I felt like a number, whereas at UofL I felt like I’m part of a family.”

For budding engineers, Elbasyouni said he believes Speed School offers an excellent path to success: small classes with a lot of hands-on lab experience, the math program which promotes camaraderie and connection with other students early on, and last but definitely not least, the ability to talk to any professor about any issue.

“It’s always an open door,” he said. “They appreciated the fact that you wanted to learn. Speed School really gives you that passion for engineering.”

After graduating from Speed School with his Master’s in Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2005, Elbasyouni worked for a variety of companies as a hardware engineer designing electrical vehicles, including General Electric in Louisville and startup electrical vehicle companies in Boston and California, before he was contracted to design the motor controller and other components of the Mars helicopter. Today, he’s a senior director atÌęÌęin Santa Monica, California, responsible for West Coast operations. The company designs and solves problems for aerospace, commercial aviation and superconductor industries.

In his role at Astrodyne, Elbasyouni also recruits and hires engineers, and that is where Speed School shines, he said, even in comparison to bigger-name engineering programs. For example, Elbasyouni was able to take a senior-level design job himself straight out of college.

“I see engineers from big engineering schools that don’t know how to hold a soldering gun or know the basics. They know a lot of theory, but don’t have enough hands-on experience. These differences in the way a lot of Speed School classes are taught have given me an advantage in the field. There were so many professors who had a big influence on me in so many ways and helped me through my career. I want them to know they’re all part of the accomplishment we achieved on Mars.”

It was at Speed School that Elbasyouni’s philosophy about engineering and life also began to evolve.

“Before, I always wanted to be in that entrepreneurial world but afterwards, I became active in environmental issues and wanted to be a person to try to make as much change as I could in the world,” he said. “It’s why I took the avenue I did exploring alternative energy efficiency. I am proud to have a negative carbon footprint on the planet. It changed my way of looking at life.”

How does Elbasyouni hope to make his mark on the world as an engineer? He said he is already “in process” with his next career step, creating his own startup, and he may work with NASA again in the future. It has always been his goal to own his own company, he says. His ambitions are driven by his desire to change the world.Ìę

“I want to work at things that are going to make the world a better place, providing tools to make it easier for people in underprivileged places,” he said.Ìę“I believe we can change the world by engineering new ways to communicate, utilize the environment, and do everything around us. We are all one, we just don’t realize it. We all want the same things – to enjoy life and live in peace.”

The University of Louisville doctoral candidate just at the IEEE Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS 2018), held in Nagoya, Japan in early July.

His paper, “,” focuses on research conducted at UofL’s . He’s studying how to build a better AFAM micro-robot — one small enough to manufacture nanotechnologies, or even manipulate cells to cure disease.

Zhang’s paper was chosen from among eight finalists, a list that included students from University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and University of California Berkeley, among others.

“Winning the conference is a great matter to me,” he said. “I didn’t realize this idea was worth any award when I came up with it; it was only a small modification to make AFAM (robot) better.”

The bottom line is that, in order to make tiny things, the workers themselves need to be tiny. It’s an idea Zhang became enamored with after he was introduced to the tiny bots by a fellow student.

“The small size, the mechanism, the intriguing design and exquisite structures took my heart,” he said.

As a doctoral student at UofL, Zhang works under Dr. Dan Popa at the Next Generation Systems robotics lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. There, Zhang was introduced to the AFAM, a micro-robot created by Dr. Popa and colleagues 10 years ago.

Zhang’s paper focuses on his research into how best to resolve issues with the AFAM, including its difficult assembly and failure rate. Popa said he was very proud of Zhang’s work and award.Ìę

“He worked hard on all aspects of the paper, conducted both simulation and experiments, and wrote down his results,” Popa said.Ìę “I think it speaks well for the research dedication of our students and for the quality of engineering graduate programs here at Speed School.”Ìę

As for Zhang, he’s now working on a way to direct the bots using lasers. After he finishes his PhD at UofL, he’s planning to continue his research, either working with industry or at a university.

“This field is very active and there are new developments everyday,” he said. “I’m excited about it.”