About Me
My Stack
Life Experiences and Goals
My journey begins with my career in hockey. From the young age of 3 I was playing competitive hockey. This cascaded into moving away from my family to New York at 15 years old, to play junior hockey. I played at this level until I was 20 years old, where I had to decide whether to continue to play or go to school to become an engineer. Always having a love for programming and science, I decided I wanted to be an engineer. Hockey taught me many great lessons over the years. From being a good teammate, to becoming a captain and being a strong leader. My hockey career taught me incredible communication and responsibility skills which I've noticed have had an immense impact in the workplace.
Between the age 3 and 20 I developed my love for technology. It started by just being a kid on XBOX that loved games. In 2012 I ventured into the PC world and built my first PC. This is where I found a game called Garry's Mod, which I loved to play. One day, I decided I was going to make my own server and start a small business. This was my leap into the rabbit hole of engineering and business. It started small but quickly escalated into 3x25 player servers that were full at all times. I learned C++ to enable custom plugins and put character skins and weapons into my store, where people purchased them with real money. I fell in love with programming at this point because I realized the potential to create and make a living.
While playing junior hockey I was enrolled at Canisius College (now Canisius University) in computer science. I wanted to expand my knowledge of programming and not lose touch of my studies whilst playing hockey. A university degree was always a goal of mine. Whilst studying at Canisius, I achieved a perfect 4.0GPA across my major courses, often achieving over 100% on my assessments. I knew I loved the field and continued to expand my knowledge with my own projects after building a solid foundation at Canisius. This lasted until I moved back home to Toronto, and was no longer playing competitive hockey.
This is when I enrolled at York Universities Lassonde School of Engineering. My first year was entirely online, and I hated it. I struggled to succeed. This led me to pursue my first corporate job with Kraken (mentioned below), whist maintaining my enrolment with minimal courses. I have since left that industry and I'm currently enrolled full time as an electrical engineering student and I'm in my third year. In my return to school I have performed significantly better, which I attribute to being in-person. I aim to specialize in biomedical microelectronics and power systems. This will keep my options open to pursue either industry as Lassonde's electrical engineering program has a lot of electives. Whilst studying I'm an active member of professor Razieh Salahandish's Laboratory of Advanced Biotechnologies for Health Assessment.
On the side, with my education and experience, I became a network administrator. I have 4 clients in which I ensure their network is secure and optimized. This process includes a rigorous initialization procedure, followed by ongoing maintenance for newly added devices and needs. I consult with these same clients utilizing my security background to ensure they are up to date and defended against the latest security concerns.
For my second full time corporate experience, I’m currently working for Ontario Power Generation (OPG). I’m an engineering intern with the company and am working at Darlington Nuclear Power Plant on the unit 4 turbine and generator, modifications refurbishment team (DNRU4 TGR MODS). The TGR scope includes three teams: Modifications which is my team, Centerline and Maintenance. A majority of my work has been cross functional between the Mods and Centerline team. I have gained substantial electrical knowledge whilst working alongside my team, and have applied my learning to help our team meet key milestones. Management has trusted me to be responsible for an entire scope which is currently in the mobilization phase of the project lifecycle.
I also LOVE to SCUBA dive! I achieved my PADI Open Water certification when I was 10 years old, then proceeded to get my Advanced Open Water certification when I turned 14. Most of my first 70 dives were in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which quickly became my underwater backyard. I still remember the beautiful colourful reefs I was privileged to explore. Unfortunately, as I got older and re-visited the same reefs, I had noticed their colour had vanished as the reefs were bleached. This phenomena occurs primarily due to the ocean increasing by as little as 1°C. This experience led me to join the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef. An initiative to engage scientists from around the world in reef conservation. Currently I volunteer my time to work on the great reef census.
Now that you've read my story, you may be curious about my future…
When I return to my studies, I aim to publish a paper within professor Razieh Salahandish's Laboratory of Advanced Biotechnologies for Health Assessment. Furthermore I want to maintain my excellent GPA of 8.3 (between A and A+) which excludes my online studies during COVID. Finally, I want to be an active member of our IEEE and NAGYN clubs within Lassonde.
For career goals, I have not completely made up my mind. I'm unsure if I want to be a researcher or join industry. With regards to industry, I actively pursued only OPG for an internship, received one, and have fallen in love with the company. If I were to join industry, I would certainly want to work at OPG in the nuclear industry. However, depending on my experience in the lab with professor Salahandish over the next two years, I may want to further my education to become a researcher.
