MEET McKENNA RESEARCH ENGINEER, UNDERGRADUATE

HOMETOWN: Born and raised in Albuquerque.

ROLE AT COSMIAC:

At COSMIAC, she mostly works on simulating robots. For the past several months, she has been working on a distributed control demonstration, and most of her work has been surrounding the simulation of it. Other work she has done at COSMIAC has included hardware-based efforts in housing systems.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED AT COSMIAC?

“I feel like I have learned so much. In technical skills, I have learned more about additive manufacturing, machining and programming. In engineering, I have learned more about design, prototyping and systems engineering processes. In soft skills, I’ve learned more about communication, organization, perseverance and what teamwork practically looks like in a work environment.”

FUTURE PLANS: She will receive a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in spring 2025, then plans to pursue a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at UNM.