Trinity Students
Trinity Engineering students are diverse in their backgrounds and interests. Approximately 30% of our students are women and minorites, compared to a national average of about 18%. Recent students have come from Nepal, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, France, Turkey, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom.
With a low 9:1 student/faculty ratio and fewer than 20 students in most classes, the heart of a Trinity education is the one-on-one relationship between professor and student. Collaborative research between engineering faculty and students often leads to student presentations at national and international conferences, and to jointly published articles. Such research allows undergraduates to pursue a level of scientific inquiry that at many schools is the domain of graduate students.
Students have successfully combined the study of engineering with other academic and extracurricular interests. Our students not only double major the mathematics and natural sciences, economics, and other quantitative fields, but have also combined the engineering major with arts, humanities, and the social sciences. They often participate in varsity sports or performing arts, study abroad, and participate in Trinity's interdisciplinary programs. The flexibility of Trinity's engineering program allows students to pursue these varied interests.
Student and Alumni Profiles
Trinity engineering graduates are successfully employed by a wide range of high-tech corporations and research laboratories, including United Technologies Pratt and Whitney, Hamilton-Sundstrand, Sikorsky, Carrier, Hewlett-Packard, Naval Research Laboratories, IBM Watson Research Center, AT&T Bell Labs, Cisco Systems, Bechtel, Massachusetts General Hospital, Chemical Bank, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Trinity graduates also study at some of the top engineering graduate programs, including MIT, RPI, Stanford, Duke, Yale, Brown, Harvard, Cornell, USC, Michigan, Wisconsin, and U. Penn. Alumni have found that the engineering degree is versatile, and quantitative reasoning developed in this program has led to careers in medicine, law, and business, among others.
Joseph Tranquillo '97
Joe Tranquillo received the B.S. Degree in Engineering with a concentration in biomedical engineering. He conducted joint research with Professors Bronzino and Ning, applying advanced digital signal processing techniques to animal electroencephalograms to study brain development and learning. Joe began performing animal surgeries in his first year at Trinity. He presented three scientific research papers on this topic while still an undergraduate at the IEEE Engineering and Medicine in Biology conference in Amsterdam in 1996. Joe completed a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Duke University and he is currently an Assistant Professor of Biomedical and Electrical Engineering at Bucknell University.
Kelly Feller '01
Kelly transferred to Trinity from Johns Hopkins University in her sophomore year. She concentrated in biomedical engineering with a focus in biomechanics. Kelly conducted cardiovascular research with Professor Palladino, developing new mathematical models of heart-blood vessel interaction and was awarded a NASA grant to support this work. She is working toward her Ph.D. in bioengineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
Nhon Trinh '04
Nhon Trinh came to Trinity from Vietnam to study electrical engineering. He has conducted research with Professor Ahlgren, developing autonomous robots. One class of robots detects fires in houses, represented by a candle in a maze, and must find and extinguish the fire as quickly as possible. Another robot must navigate difficult terrain. Nhon is also conducting research with Professor Ning, developing robot vision systems. Nhon received a NASA grant to support this work, was elected a President’s Fellow, and academic distinction, and was valedictorian for the Class of 2004. He is working toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at Brown University.
Michelle Bovard '04
Michelle conducted cardiovascular and fluid mechanics research with Professor Palladino, studying fluid flow in tubing of different flow impedances. Her research was funded by a NASA grant and won first place in the 2004 IEEE Northeast Bioengineering Conference for student presentations. Michelle graduated Phi Beta Kappa and now attends graduate school at the University of California San Diego.