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Brandon Nguyen

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Bio

An aspiring Structural Engineer with a relentless passion for aerospace and astronomy. Love to spend my free time researching new astronomy discoveries and playing games. “Space is for everybody. It’s not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That’s our new frontier out there, and it’s everybody’s business to know about space.”

Education

University of California-San Diego

Bachelor's degree program
2019 - 2024
  • Majors:
    • Materials Engineering
  • Not planning to go to medical school
  • Career

    • Dream career field:

      Aviation & Aerospace

    • Dream career goals:

    • Present

    Sports

    Badminton

    Club
    2016 – 20193 years

    Arts

    • Graphic Design

      Computer Art
      Mandalas, scenes from my favorite movies that I digitally traced and recolored.
      2018 – 2019

    Public services

    • Volunteering

      UCSD Rocket Propulsion Laboratory — Propulsion Team: Researching designs and materials suitable for the thrust mount and o-ring. Collaborated with teammates during 3-D modeling using SolidWorks.
      2020 – 2021

    Future Interests

    Volunteering

    Philanthropy

    John Alfred Smythe Memorial Scholarship
    A casual superpower that often goes unnoticed is the ability to create interlocking portals, such as in the famous game series, Portal. I grew up playing Portal and Portal 2, so I have no doubt that these games have a profound impact on why I believe having the super power of interlocking portals has incredible potential whilst being unique. The range of the abilities that come with this power range from powering an infinite energy source to allowing instantaneous travel. The ability of opening one portal that connects with another elsewhere opens up the possibility to create an infinite source of energy. As a young adult in the 21st century, it is apparent that global warming and climate change are becoming a looming threat over the future of our planet. The cause of these calamities stem from the need of convertible energy for humans via coal factories, oil rigs, and electricity plants; all of which contribute massively to the problems mentioned beforehand. With the help of portals, the power crisis could be mitigated. An innovative way of using the portal power would be to shoot a portal upwards towards an elevated area whilst shooting the connecting portal directly below the first portal. Throwing an object in the bottom portal would make it fall out of the top portal, then falling back down towards the bottom portal, thereby creating an infinite loop of a falling object that continues to accelerate due to gravity. Scientists and engineers could harvest the energy of the ever-falling object with contraptions such as turbines, waterwheels, etc. The implications and amount of energy produced are both limitless. Another use of portals I find interesting is the method of instantaneous transportation. Simply put, an object could theoretically travel an infinite amount of distance with no time needed. This could be applied to space travel, where instead of emptying expenses on rockets and space shuttles, we could open portals from Earth to targeted planets and moons, eliminating expenses and time constraints. It can even be applied during day-to-day activities, such as when you're too lazy to reach for the TV remote, or grab a drink from the fridge, one can just stick their hand in a portal and reach it. Construction working casualties would be minimized since cranes no longer need to hazardously lift enormous steel beams hundreds of feet into the air. In conclusion, I believe that portals are a truly underrated superpower whose limits are the user's imagination and ingenuity.