Bio-Rad Employee: Sandeep Baliga, Father Growing up, I always thought that engineering was about finding the right answer. It was not until I spent weeks redesigning the same landing leg mounting system over and over that I understood what engineering actually is: a process of testing ideas, finding what works, and finally building something that helps people. This year, I worked with a friend on a thrust vector control (TVC) self landing rocket. The goal was to build a rocket that is able to actively correct its orientation during flight and landing in a controlled manner. While my friend focused on the software, I was responsible for the hardware. Using Autodesk Fusion 360, I designed the entire airframe, developed landing legs and their mounting system, and made sure to make space for the gimbal mechanism that controls the rocket’s orientation. The landing leg mounting system became one of my hardest problems. It needed to be strong enough to absorb landing forces without shifting or breaking, while staying light enough not to compromise how high the rocket goes. After finding out that a single set of legs could not distribute the landing load reliably, I redesigned the entire system to use two sets of legs, spreading the impact force across a wider base and making the structure significantly more stable. Another big challenge was designing the ejection system for our dual motor configuration. The rocket uses a larger F motor for launch and a smaller D motor for the landing burn, so the spent F motor has to be ejected mid flight before the D motor can provide thrust for landing. I solved this by designing a lip into the motor tube that holds the F motor in place during launch. When the D motor ignites, its thrust pushes down against the F motor, and that force is what breaks the lip and ejects it out the bottom of the rocket, clearing the way for the landing burn. This process taught me more about engineering than any class had. That kind of problem solving is happening everywhere right now. Engineers are making solar panels cheap enough that communities that never had reliable electricity are getting it for the first time. Researchers are developing diagnostic tools that can detect diseases earlier and even more accurately than ever before. Which means more people get treated in time. Even in aerospace, reusable rockets are starting to bring down the cost of getting to space, opening up possibilities that did not exist a few years ago. Those same principles, careful design, testing, iteration, and reliability, show up in every field of engineering. In medical technology, an unreliable instrument is not just an inconvenience. It can affect a diagnosis. In scientific research, a poorly designed tool limits what discoveries are even possible. Four years ago my dad started working at Bio-Rad, and since then I have gotten a closer look at what it means to do engineering in service of something that actually matters. Seeing that up close is a big part of why I want to pursue this field. As I begin my mechanical engineering degree at UC Irvine, I want to contribute to that same mission. Science expands what we understand about the world, and engineering turns those discoveries into tools that can actually help people. I am excited to be a part of a field where getting the design right, and then making it better, matters.