News

Alexa Izquierdo is a 3rd-year Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently in the Robotics Minor program and hopes to continue to pursue robotics in the future.  

Alexa has enjoyed her time in the Robotics Minor program, with her favorite part being the Gateway to Robotics course. It was her first opportunity to apply concepts such as kinematics and PID control to a tangible product. She described the course as “conceptually challenging and immensely rewarding” as it deepened her interest in control systems.

The Robotics Minor Program at the University of Texas allows students across the university to explore their passion for robotics. The program currently offers 25 students the opportunity to participate each semester and consists of five exciting courses to be completed during the course of the minor. Alexa heard about the program from Dr. Zhou, a Mechatronics professor, and Mechatronics and Control Lab Director here at the University of Texas. 

Currently, Alexa is working on an end-effector for a twin-twin transfusion surgery robot in Dr. Ann Majewicz Fey’s HeRo lab at Texas Robotics. Alexa also recently joined the Texas Aerial Robotics’ software team, where she will help with programming a drone to use computer vision to autonomously pick up a ball. Texas Aerial Robotics is an undergraduate organization at UT Austin that is focused on design, build, and programming fully autonomous drones to complete a variety of missions. 

Alexa has always been interested in robotics because of its multidisciplinary intersection and its “potential to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges”. She hopes to develop an expertise in robotics and someday become a Robotics Engineer capable of innovating and solving problems within the field. Specifically, she is interested in manipulators and effectors, along with sensing perception and control.   

Her plans for the future include robotics despite not having a specific plan or idea for what role she would like to play within a company or which industry she would like to pursue. In general, she is interested in “manufacturing, medical robotics, and startups that explore new applications of robotics.”