User:Madeline.nelson

About Me

I grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho. Born on March 28th, 1997 in Seattle, Washington, I spent the first three years of my life in Seattle before moving with my family to Idaho after my mom chose to retire from her job at Microsoft. I am the youngest of three children born to Pamela Joan Fleischer and Timothy David Nelson from Orange County and the Boston area, respectively. My older brother, Brendan, graduated from Southern Methodist University in 2011 with a degree in Film Studies. He now works in sales for a technology company based out of Santa Barbara, California and recently got engaged. My older sister, Kerry Lee, graduated from the University of Southern California in January with a degree in International Relations and minors in Psychology and Spanish. She moved to Baltimore this May and now works in operations for Amazon. Though both of my parents worked for technology companies in the past, neither were engineers and the joke of the family is how I ever came upon the idea of becoming an engineer.

Past Education

One of the key factors in my parents' decision to move to Idaho was the presence of a small private school named The Community School. This small "outdoorsy" private school would provide my siblings and me with a unique middle school and high school experience in one of the most beautiful mountain towns in the U.S. With four outdoors trips a year and an extremely intelligent faculty, the school offered an experience like no other. Both my siblings did end up attending the Community School for middle school and high school, however, by the time I reached 8th grade, I decided I wanted a different high school experience. A year later, after many persuasive conversations with my parents, I arrived at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. While both private high schools with challenging academics, the two could not be more different. The boarding school, located in central Massachusetts, would be my home for the next four years. My time at Deerfield was completely indescribable, however for this short summary I will attempt to formulate a few of the more important thoughts. Deerfield challenged me in many ways, but also taught me more about myself and about others than I ever would have imagined. It was at Deerfield that I further cultivated my love of Math and Science and is surely the only reason that I chose to pursue engineering in college.

Current Courses

I am currently enrolled in EGR103(obviously), Multi-variable Calculus with Fitzpatrick, Chemistry 101 with Roy, and Economics 101 with Fullenkamp. I find all my classes extremely engaging and will be interested to see what my opinion of each subject is upon the conclusion of the courses in December.

Independent Projects

The Grand Challenge of Engineering that most interests me is providing access to clean water. Rainwater and Health in Developing Countries: A Case Study on Uganda, David Baguma, Syed Alijunid, Jamal Hashim, Helmut Jung, and Loiskandl Willibald, United Nations University, updated 11 October 2012, accessed 7 September 2015 (Provide access to clean water)

Favorite Demonstrations on Matlab

Before my EGR103 class, I had never used matlab, but am finding it is cooler and cooler every time I use it. I think the 3-D plots are fun to tinker around with and my favorite has to be the plot using surf and the interp shading in the "cool" colors. But I think something I think is even more amazing is that matlab has somehow managed to create all of earth's topography using a computer system that most people initially think is only used for computing and manipulating matrices. The possibilities in matlab are endless and I'm looking forward to learning more about the program and honing my skills so that I can start writing my own programs (none of which will ever be as cool as earth's topography).