Juliana Bottenberg
SWE Overseas: India
SWE Overseas is an outreach program in which members of the Society of Women Engineers travel to India for about 2 weeks in May. The two main objectives of the trip are to give SWE members the chance to have an international experience and to engage middle and high school students in projects that center around physics and engineering.
Last summer, I had the honor of being a part of the first SWE Overseas trip. I traveled with 10 other members of SWE to India for two weeks. We got to work with 70+ students! Those kids were so excited and happy that we had come, and it was a truly inspiring experience. I learned a lot about flexibility, stewardship, problem solving, patience and leadership while in India.
This trip was important to me because I love getting to know new people and I got to touch so many lives. I hope my presence made others interested in engineering and encouraged girls to pursue degrees in the STEM fields. Being a part of this outreach program really helped me develop global awareness and gain first hand experience with international travel.
Key Experiences
FREEDM REU Summer 2013
After traveling to India last summer, I worked in the Center for Advanced Power Systems at Florida State Universtiy as an REU through the program Future Renewable Electrical Engery Delivery and Management.
In short, I got to work on a summer research project in Florida in a lab that focused primarily on electrical energy and the power grid. My specific project was called Power Control in a Cyber-physical Real-time Simulation. For my project, I programmed a GUI client which communicated with a real time digital simulated smart inverter for a solar panel.
For this portion of the summer, I was completely on my own. I learned about being independent and responsible. This was an important experience because I not only gained technical skills but I also learned to be self reliant. I made many new friends in Florida and many of them served as mentors for me. Overall this was another amazing experience that I wouldn't trade for the world.
