I completed my Master of Science in Engineering (M.S.E.) in Civil (Structural) Engineering at the University of Michigan with a 4.0 GPA. The program was a deep dive into how structures actually behave once you move beyond the simplifying assumptions of basic design courses, and it solidified my decision to stay on for a PhD.
My coursework spanned both fundamentals and advanced analysis: Plastic Analysis and Design of Steel Frames, Finite Element Methods, Nonlinear Analysis, Deployable and Reconfigurable Structures, Reliability of Structures, Infrastructure Systems Optimization, Design of Wood Structures, Sensing Systems, and Analysis of Dynamic Systems. Together, these courses pushed me to think about structures not just as static objects, but as systems that can yield, move, adapt, and perform under uncertainty.
Michigan is also where I first encountered deployable and reconfigurable structures in a serious way. That exposure led me to take up an independent research project on curved-origami systems, where I began exploring how flat sheets could be transformed into complex, load-carrying geometries through controlled folding. That project was my first real taste of combining mechanics, geometry, and computation in a research setting—and it ultimately laid the groundwork for my decision to pursue a PhD focused on adaptable, reconfigurable structural systems.