 My name is Rosalba Wurtsman. I'm a senior materials engineering student here at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I had initially chosen to be a mechanical engineer, but thankfully UWM offered a lot of co-op opportunities. So I took one of those co-ops and they taught me a lot about metallurgy, a lot about different analysis tools that you can use to look at materials. So from then I was like, this is amazing and I'm going to change my major to materials engineering. So everything you see and everything you use is made from something. A collection of atoms at a very small scale that when you look at it, it can become cloth, it's metal, it's steel. So as a materials engineering student, you learn how to fabricate and how to characterize and how to synthesize this. You get to see things at the very small level, at the molecular and atomic level, but you also have to think about how do you process it, how do you make it? And I think that's what material engineering is. As a freshman I came in and I learned about all these different methods of making cementitious materials. It was actually a lot like baking or cooking, but you're just using different powders and your cake will actually not just be a cake, it'll be a piece of concrete. But then we got to make a lot of other interesting projects. So have you ever thought of, what if cement is magnetic? Have you seen ferrofluids where you have like a fluid and you put a magnet and it rises up? That's what we did with concrete. We were exploring around seeing what can we do to make it better. And then we also worked on incorporating nanofibers or carbon nanotubes and carbon nanofibers so we can send signals across concrete slabs to see is there someone on it? Is there a car there? So you know something's you're looking for parking spots? It would be a lot easier if the place already told you what parking spots were open, if there's already a car there, just because the concrete is now smart. I really like just being able to see things at the smaller scale. So I think that's what got me. Due to my extensive research experience, I was able to have an internship at a national laboratory and it's actually in South Chicago called Arta National Laboratory where I learned how to make superconducting thin film detectors. And so having that wonderful experience at such a prestigious national laboratory it has also allowed me to apply for the McNair program. And after talking to so many renowned scientists here and at Argonne, I learned you have to obtain a PhD so you can continue exploring. And I want to be an explorer at the really small scale. I think the College of Engineering helped me discover my passion by not saying no to students like me. I noticed that all the faculty here at UW Milwaukee and the College of Engineering are very open and they want students to learn, especially if they have research labs. So I'm so thankful that different professors have also just given me their time and allowed me to run some small sort of experiment in their labs to just learn more. Offering all these opportunities is one of the best things about UWM.