IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN ENGINEER IT

ALUMNI IN FOCUS

Stijn Vandycke’s story looks like it comes from a Disney fairy tale. The prince meets a beautiful princess in a faraway land. They fall head over heels in love. The prince leaves everything behind to marry the princess of his dreams. They now make a career together. He as a systems engineer, she as a mechanical at Walt Disney Company in Orlando (Florida).

Who is not familiar with Walt Disney’s historic saying: ‘If you can dream it, you can do it’? To be able to keep on putting the grand master’s boundless imagination into practice, an army of engineers is working day and night. One of them is Stijn Vandycke, who graduated in 2017 at Group T Campus as Master in Electromechanical Engineering (option Intelligent Mobility). In his third year of bachelor’s studies, Stijn spent a semester at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts. The institution is world-renowned for its dynamic, project-based curriculum and Best Classroom Experiences. The revelation that changes Stijn’s life is not the study, however, but Sophie, a senior student who helps the newcomers find their way around the campus. Sophie has Cuban roots, comes from Miami (Florida) and studies Mechanical Engineering and Robotics at Olin. From being Stijn’s ‘big sister’, she quickly evolves into ‘big love’. The spark ignites and transforms the semester into an unforgettable fairy tale.

Internship

Back in Leuven, Stijn still has three long semesters to complete his studies and plan his return to the States as soon as possible. He manages to do the latter. In the new academic year, Stijn starts at the University of Minnesota for a master in Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering. He combines his studies with a job in the ‘remote sensing ‘lab. Here, he helps developing advanced agricultural robots, which will earn him an additional master’s degree.

Sophie in the meantime is back in Florida and is working at Disney World, where she managed to get an internship. Stijn follows her example and can get a place at the magical resort through an internship as well. Once united, the young couple gets married and settles down in Orlando, near the world’s largest and most visited amusement park.

“Disney World is not one but four theme parks and two water parks,” Stijn explains. “Add to that two shopping centres, 27 hotels, a campsite, sports grounds and countless places of entertainment. The locations are connected by a road network, two monorails, three ferries, gondola systems, water taxis and buses. All this covers an area of 101 km², which is twice the size of the city of Leuven. In pre-Corona times, there were more than 50 million visitors annually”.

Stijn Vandycke and Sophie

©Alexander Hermans

Simulations

Since 2019, Stijn has been working as a system engineer in the MST department. That stands for Modelling Simulation & Training Tools, a mix of mechanics and electronics. “We are heavily involved during the design process of the animatronic robots as well as many machines controlling the attractions”, Stijn continues. “This is done based on computer simulations. Nowadays, for each new installation, we also develop the appropriate packages to train or retrain the operations cast using tools like VR”. As an example, Stijn mentions ‘Stuntronics’, a show where a robot dressed like Spiderman gets launched from one roof to another. The robot is designed to land in a small hidden net. “During the design we had to consider all possible safety risks for cast members and guests. One of them is the weather. Wind gusts can happen at any time pushing the robot away from the intended catching net. For each type of weather, we have a suitable scenario ready that anticipates the danger”.

Experiment

Soon after the start of Stijn’s new role, the Covid pandemic crippled Florida’s entertainment industry hard. Disney was forced to close all their parks and resorts for several months. This resulted in a loss of billions for the company and the dismissal of thousands of employees. As an engineer, Stijn was able to stay at work. “In order to re-open the park as responsible as possible, Disney evaluated and inspect every attraction thoroughly. Measures were put in place on all the attractions to guarantee safe operations. For this purpose, we had to talk to experts from various departments such as logistics, security, legal and marketing. Top management also closely followed our progress. After all, every form of optimization should lead to further reopening the parks in a safe manner while increasing customer satisfaction”.

And Sophie? She too has found her dream job contracting for, being closer to the design aspects. Her job is to surprise people. What Sophie dreams up and designs, Stijn engineers. Walt Disney could not have imagined it better.

Yves Persoons