She’s all about building things

Someday we might drive across a bridge Amy Perez has built.

As a second-year mechanical engineering student at USD, Amy Perez is setting her sights on construction engineering. The hands-on, design and technical aspects of the work appeal to her.

For Amy, a graduate of the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High charter school, inspiration comes from all over.

A class on user-centered design got her thinking about assistive technology—the development of hardware or software to improve the capabilities of people with disabilities.

In the field, Amy is performing research in the Tijuana Estuary to develop NaviLens, an AI-powered app that helps people with visual impairments navigate the outdoors.

Last summer, in a separate project at her computer, Amy harnessed the MATLAB programming and numeric computing platform to take a deep dive into biological fluid dynamics.

In February, she presented her findings at a Women in Mathematics conference at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

One month later, Amy summarized all of this in a presentation to the San Diego Education Fund Board of Directors.

She told the board that her parents did not attend college and that her mother had dreamed of attending USD.

“Support from the San Diego Education Fund allows me the privilege to study my major at my university,” Amy said, “and to take advantage of many more opportunities.”