UCLA Graduation!

This week I graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering at UCLA

It was a great week of celebration with my friends and my family after a proud 4 years of work
you can view the week HERE

These are two of my best friends, Rohan and Akash...both studied Neuroscience and may be future Doctors

Mamma and Papi were a huge inspiration to me to decide to study electrical engineering coming out of high school

I know nonno also saw my graduation and was very proud.
And a full circle moment: I actually wrote about our Fiat Lux moments in my essays to get me accepted into UCLA
...and it just happens that it's the very Motto of the University of California system!

These are my best friends, just missing Sawyer!

...and more!

This is one of my EE buddies Parsa. He was a good friend at Uni high school with me, and we took a lot of courses together this past year

This is Kavin. We met in the "Fast Track" program, which selected the top 30 kids from high school studying EE or CS at
UCLA our first year He will be one of my roommates next year!

This is Taha. Very smart guy from Lebanon and we will take a lot of the same Masters courses together next year

Here's the apartment group! Mikey, Sawyer, Akash, Nic, Jack, Lucho

Our friend was nice enough to take pictures of all of us for free... with some tip;-)

Here's one with everyone that went to Panama over spring break, with Aryan added (top middle) who couldn't make it

lots of poses aroud UCLA's beautiful campus

Looks like Tommy had something funny to say

This is Akash and Lucho. Funny story, i met Akash in the communal showers at Hedrick Hall our first year
and they asked me if I wanted to be roommates with them, despite not being super good friends yet.
After 3 years living together, its safe to say it was one of the best decisions I made at UCLA... by far

We recreated a funny picture from our sophomore year dorm

This is Sawyer. This one was luck of the draw. He was my freshman year random roommate and first friend i made at UCLA.
He is an incredible person and energy to be around always.

This was us 4 years ago in Hedrick hall. It will be strange not living with Sawyer after 4 years. I got quite emotional saying
bye to sawyer but I know he will have a great time moving to New York and we will be friends for life.

We took some pictures in Powell Library, the famous reading room at UCLA

I definitely spent a good amount of time in this building studying for exams

looks like Rohan is cooking something up

A magestic "Last Supper" - UCLA edition

Then we go outside for Sawyers favorite part

Popping the champagne!

A nice tradition

with Royce Hall in the background

...and a funny surpise picture, with the Panama "Plaza FC" jerseys underneath

These are the "Canaleros"

what a team

Throughout the week there are more traditions.
Sawyer was a tour guide throughout his 4 years, and he gives us his final "Friends and Family Tour"

We also jump in the fountain...which you are supposed to only do during
your first campus visit while getting your "Bruin Ties", and finally after your last final exam

A few weeks earlier, Sawyer also wins an award for funniest skit at "Spring Sing", a UCLA wide talent show

This is Boelter Hall, the place where I had all of my engineering courses...and spent a lot of loooong nights preparing for exams

One of my favorite courses was Analog Electronics II, with a legendary professor in the field- Dr. Behzad Razavi.
His videos on youtube have hundreds of thousands of views and he has made dozens of famous textbooks in the field.
We are so lucky to take classes with him and learn this stuff first hand from him.

our TA named "Guru" helped us with our first simulation and layout of a 4bit CLA, "Carry-Look-Ahead" circuit for a digital adder
using Cadence, a powerful tool used to design integrated circuits. It was a great experience and next year I will take
a "Tapeout Course" with Professor Razavi and try out the full process of designing and testing a chip over 9 months

We also took courses with Professor Darabi, who taught us a wide range of circuits: covering analog, a bit of digital, and some
power electronics, and we finished off the course by designing a thermometer with a custom buck converter .
His classes have been some of the best at UCLA and we try to absorb his way of thinking, working through problems,
and interacting with others. he's a fantastic professor to have... we can see why broadcom likes him so much ;-)

A nice club i was a part of was "Engineering Ambassadors"

we got paid to give tours to prospective students and organize events for the engineering school

It was a great way to meet people that were studying engineering and also network to find jobs over the summer

and also a lot of fun socials and events meeting people

Funny story: my first year I joined in the spring and had to give my first tours in the summer because we didnt have many tourguides available.
It ends up that i didn't have much time to be properly trained (which takes a full quarter) or even see how tours were supposed to go.
After expecting a modest small tour of a family or two...I show up on my first day to 25 people waiting for a tour!!!
It ended up going ok and after that it was really a great group to be a part of for 4 years.

Sounds like another excuse to pop champagne !!

A picture with the whole group... who were nice enough to organize a celebration for the seniors

Finally, some last pictures with my favorite group...

The club soccer team!

These are the 8 seniors of the team:
Jimmy, Grant, Xavier, Sam
Mikey, Nic, Collin, Jack

It was a really great group of guys to be a part of, and a great way to stay active and social throughout my studying

Grazie to Gio who introduced me to the team and who i got to play with for 3 years (Both on the left side!)

We shared a lot of memories traveling to regional touranments in Cal Poly Slo and National tournaments in Round Rock Texas

Not quite the xavi picture...but we managed to win 3 league titles and a few regional tournaments,
and even the first "Open Division" National championship for the UCLA club team