Changes

Nelson Fernandes is a student Mechanical Engineering undergraduate at Southern Illinois University Carbondale starting Fall 2018. Currently studying Mechanical Engineering with a specialization Born and raised in Energy Engineering with minors in Sustainability Chicago, he ventured to SIU after high school which is about six hours south of the Windy City to explore new opportunities and Mathematicsexperiences. Nelson hopes to accumulate knowledge from several fields Stepping out of his comfort zone, spent the first two years exploring campus and making friends along the way ranging from Mechanical the TRiO program to Honors College to Engineering through coursework, CAD and renewable energy through professional training, Information Technology/Electrical through working at SalukiTech Service Center and Leadership/Industrial Management and Engineering through Student Council to Robotics to the Leadership Development Programand the University Innovation Fellows. All in combination Building relationships and accumulating knowledge from various field to produce an excellent individual excellence with the capability ability to solve complex problems with a background in multiple fields.  The Leadership Development Program is a nationally recognized NSF program where students undergo an intense two year program of 5:30AM workouts and 6:00AM morning meetings. As a first year, we focus on leading ourselves through multiple perspectivesdeveloping our servant leadership skills and leading a project once a semester. As a second year, I stepped into a Coaching position where I guided four first year members through the year by reinforcing the primary leadership practices and project management skills. The growth I have made during my time in the program allowed myself to grow into the person I am today. A leader who focuses on building relationships with the team and planning ahead to make sure the job gets done. And the skills I have learned, enabled me to develop my U.I.F. project into something larger than originally thought. Currently working towards creating  As a unified system for effectively communicating information across SIU's campus as well as University Innovation Fellow, Nelson worked with the College of Agriculture specifically by revitalizing and modernizing SIu's Agriculture Building's the existing Green Roofto become an innovative space for multidisciplinary research to be housed. In addition The roof was installed in 2010 for agricultural research; however, became increasingly underutilized between the retirement of the professor who held ownership and lack of ownership among those involved. The plan became to being revitalize and modernize the space through a hard workerproject where a team of students will be recruited for have a major clean up along with installing an autonomous irrigation system, to solve the watering needs, data acquisition device, Nelson enjoys running the previous system's contract expired several years ago and was not renewed, and a wind turbine. The next step is incorporating engineering and being with friends agricultural students' research on the roof and family!increase the research utilization from 1%. Yes, among the 0.1 acre of available space, approximately one percent is occupied for research.