During my junior and senior years, I conducted research for the pilot ground-source heat exchange project at Smith through the SURF (Summer Research Fellowship) program, a CEEDS (The Center for the Environment, Ecological Design, and Sustainability) special studies project and my honors thesis. The project goal was to test out drilling one borehole that would be connected to the field house and could heat and cool the building through a heat pump.

“Through my work on this project, I learned that an engineer’s job is not only about modeling and calculation, but also about applying design to the real world. The real-world constraints of this project have helped prepare me for my career as a civil and environmental engineer.”

I worked on creating a control-oriented, one-dimensional model that would optimize the performance of the borehole. The borehole was drilled in September 2019, and I helped analyze the temperature data from it to better understand the conditions underground and model the future campuswide system. Through my work on this project, I learned that an engineer’s job is not only about modeling and calculation, but also about applying design to the real world. The real-world constraints of this project have helped prepare me for my career as a civil and environmental engineer.