Jackie Villalobos: UC Engineer

Jackie Villalobos, a fourth year electrical engineering student at UC San Diego, has some advice for future engineering students: get involved on campus! She learned this the hard way.

“My first year, I wasn’t involved in anything at all,” she said. “I came in and thought I’m just going to get on top of studying and get used to school. That was the worst decision I could have made and I really regret it.”

It’s hard to image that, since Villalobos is now the president of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at UC San Diego, helped found the Anita Borg Leadership and Engagement (ABLE) outreach program, is a student worker organizing educational camps at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and is an undergraduate researcher in Professor Tara Javidi’s lab.

“I met so many new friends through SWE and I felt so much more supported than when I was alone trying to figure out college by myself,” Villalobos said. “You just have to take that first step. If you’re just going to class and going home, there’s not much growth that will happen because you’re not getting out of your comfort zone.”

Villalobos grew up in Chula Vista, twenty miles south of UC San Diego. Her mother and father—who is also an electrical engineer-- immigrated to the United States from Mexico for her father’s job before she was born. The engineering mentality that she saw in her father convinced her that this was a field she was interested in.

“What appealed to me about engineering is if something would break around the house, or the garage stopped working, he would never call anyone to come fix it-- he’d be the one to fix it, and he’d ask if I wanted to help. That’s what got me into engineering, was seeing how applicable it was to everything. That if anything broke, he’d say ‘Oh I can fix it.’ I really liked that mindset and that’s what appealed to me with engineering.”

Her decision to choose electrical engineering for her major wasn’t so decisive. That’s why she enjoys devoting time to outreach efforts that help high school students learn more about what specific majors entail.

“I ended up really liking electrical engineering, but going in I know I didn’t know what I was getting into. That’s why now through SWE, outreach is my favorite part of what we do because we’re able to talk to high school girls about what we do in our majors, what goes on in our classes, and they can explore different majors.”

In addition to her role with SWE, Villalobos is an undergraduate researcher in Javidi’s electrical engineering lab, working on path optimization for drones. The goal is to be able to give a drone a starting point and end point, and have it figure out the most optimized travel path. Their current application is for farmers who use drones to check on their livestock and crops—instead of the drone finding the target object and then landing, the team is working to be able to dispatch the drone, have it check on the object of interest, and then return to its home destination, all on its own.

In addition to finding a group or community to get involved with, Villalobos has one other piece of advice for current and future engineering students: find time for yourself.

“That’s something I always try to work on, because you have a lot of things in your day but there’s also a time where you need to breathe and relax and take a step back,” she said. “Take a moment. I would say for me at least it was about not going for everything all at once and piling a bunch of stuff on. Little by little you take steps, but you just have to make that first one.”