Where inspiration meets inspiration, you’ll come across URI’s Raymond Turrisi – URI News
KINGSTON, R.I. – May perhaps 3, 2022 – At the College of Rhode Island University of Engineering, there are masses of hugely enthusiastic students. Just after all, engineering packages are challenging to get into and hugely demanding.
A person of the finest illustrations of this kind of a motivated and motivated engineering pupil is graduating senior Raymond Turrisi.
Turrisi’s soar into engineering 5 a long time back when he entered URI was decisive and intentional, but only just after giving it tons of believed.
“I required to have an understanding of accurately why I was likely to commit to attending a college and a method right before I used,” reported Turrisi, who is from West Warwick, Rhode Island. “People have various motivations for choosing a job – whether it is a money determination, locating benefit in your perform, a mixture of the two, or one thing else. I needed to review a thing which empowered me to address serious issues we face currently, so I can just take them head on.”
Following thinking of the military services, Turrisi looked into engineering at URI, and built his selection.
“I was the initially in my loved ones to go to college. I desired to be certain that I made the most of it, and I believed I could do that at URI,” reported Turrisi.
Finding his put
At URI, Turrisi identified that the “small feel” of URI allowed him direct obtain to his professors.
“I observed so lots of chances from the pretty starting. I could interact with my professors, study from transitioning graduate students, or graduate students ending their higher instruction and inquire what they’ve discovered from their selections. There were also lots of opportunities to get associated with research labs, with professors who are usually open up to enthusiastic pupils.” stated Turrisi.
One particular professor he singles out is Musa Jouaneh in mechanical engineering, who Turrisi credits with encouraging him figure out how mechanical engineering matches into robotics in the course of his freshman and sophomore years and Jouaneh’s enthusiasm for allowing for him and one more undergraduate scholar to perform with a master’s college student.
“Since I achieved Ray about 4 many years ago, I have been amazed by his enthusiasm and desire in robotics, his involvement in extracurricular actions, and his potential to equilibrium functioning nearly total-time in off-campus work to help himself,” Jouaneh claimed. “In my 32-12 months vocation at URI, I can only believe of a couple of undergraduate pupils in mechanical engineering whose abilities are on par with his.”
Turrisi felt ideal at dwelling at URI, getting a place to prosper.
He joined the URI Hydrobotics club, which he soon led. He turned a captain of the URI Hydrobotics workforce, increasing the staff from 7 to 29 associates. But this was only the commencing.
“From my activities in undergraduate research and viewing how substantially I have been able to discover, I preferred to provide similar alternatives to the workforce so underclassmen can get included early,” Turrisi reported.
In Turrisi’s sophomore calendar year, he jumped right into robotics and automation study when he joined the Good Oceans Units Lab, or the SOS Lab, under the mentorship of URI Graduate Faculty of Oceanography Professor Mingxi Zhou.
“I formulated a differential tilting thruster and uncovered new strategies for thruster characterizations, which resulted in my to start with academic publication following my very first summer time of undergraduate investigate,” reported Turrisi.
“Raymond shown his unbiased investigate teamwork skills by assisting other lab friends on diverse projects,” claimed Zhou. “His enthusiasm and passion in robotics push him to obtain new knowledge at an unbelievable rate. I believe Raymond has a fantastic likely of getting to be thriving in robotics and congratulate him on commencing his new journey at MIT.”
Immediately after functioning on many initiatives in the SOS Lab, Turrisi received just one of the most prestigious undergraduate awards nationwide, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship. It was even though undertaking study in the SOS Lab that Turrisi commenced to believe about pursuing graduate studies in engineering. URI engineering encourages analysis at the undergraduate level, usually pairing learners with graduate students and professors in collaborative analysis.
“Undergraduate research is arguably the maximum effects observe in engineering education and learning and is as a result a major emphasis in engineering at URI,” stated Anthony Marchese, dean of the URI University of Engineering. “Students who perform with faculty in their study labs profit from immediate mentorship from school and grad college students. Lots of of our best engineering learners do not enter our program with the purpose of having an advanced degree, but following working in a college research lab, many of our pupils such as Ray have absent on to graduate plans at several of the leading analysis universities in the earth.”
Inspiring some others
In his fourth calendar year, Turrisi served as vice president of Tau Beta Pi, exactly where he structured tutoring for additional than 70 engineering pupils with that year’s initiates though most of the underclassmen’s courses were being on the web because of to the pandemic.
“When I was becoming a member of the engineering honor culture Tau Beta Pi there was a need to tutor an underclassman, but I wished to test myself in communicating and presenting what I’ve learned in courses extra broadly,” explained Turrisi. “I arranged a tutoring recitation with Dr. Nasim Rahmani for a Mechanics of Products course which was welcome to all her learners, in which we crammed the room with about 30 pupils – a great deal additional than I was expecting.”
“When Raymond was a candidate for Tau Beta Pi membership he had to complete our assistance prerequisite, which is to typically provide one particular tutoring session for one particular engineering university student. Raymond requested me if he could tutor a entire home of learners,32 to be specific, rather of the one particular required university student. It is this variety of motivation that defines who he is,” stated Richard Vaccaro, professor of Electrical and Computer system Engineering.
Turrisi also participated in the URI Engineering Capstone Design Application, which is a year-lengthy group job in which learners produce an engineering answer to a true-entire world obstacle. He labored with Rhode Island’s Sons of Liberty distillery and retired URI plant science professor Michael Sullivan.
“We created an automated malting program for small craft breweries,” reported Turrisi. “It is a process in which modest batches of custom made malt could be designed autonomously.”
In his senior calendar year, Turrisi was awarded a Tau Beta Pi graduate fellowship. Tau Beta Pi, which features all engineering disciplines, awards about 30 graduate fellowships every single 12 months among the the 300 to 400 candidates from engineering educational facilities through the United States.
What the potential retains
“I hope to devote my vocation to the robotics area, in places which enhances how robots engage in the human globe about our ergonomics with no lodging and execute responsibilities for which people are unfit. Some responsibilities have to have achievement in difficult or hazardous environments, and require sturdy autonomy, this kind of as extraterrestrial and deep-sea exploration,” claimed Turrisi. “I’m most intrigued in the intersection of synthetic intelligence, controls, and the animation of mechanical methods.”
In April, Turrisi acknowledged a entire assistantship in the very selective joint Massachusetts Institute of Technological innovation / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Ph.D. plan, arguably the most prestigious underwater robotics plan in the entire world.
“I’ve normally believed that becoming an engineer empowers us with the applications and know-how to synthesize and get our concepts to scale – creating methods to challenges which can be certainly transformative to significant populations,” mentioned Turrisi. “This was a significant cause for wanting to be an engineer. It is a complicated software, but it is effortless to uncover the commitment and get pleasure from the artistic processes when you can see the effect your perform will have.”
Turrisi will graduate from URI in May with twin levels in mechanical engineering and laptop or computer science, and minors in arithmetic and robotics. He begins at MIT / Woods Hole in June.