Alejandra Jaramillo
Sustainable Innovation and Energy Engineering Student
My name is Alejandra Jaramillo Cepeda and I am studying the Sustainable Innovation and Energy Engineering undergraduate degree program. I am currently in the fifth semester of the program and the further I progress into the curriculum, the more I realize that sustainability is indispensable in the current world. This premise may not be so obvious to a lot of people, but sooner or later we all will have to agree and accept the fact that we do not have a planet with infinite resources.
I became interested in this subject as I started high school, specifically, when I studied the operation of a landfill. I realized that I had never stopped to think about what happened to a wrapper after I put it in the wastebasket. After becoming acquainted with the method used to handle residues and the environmental impact it entails, I promised myself that I would not continue to overlook the damage that we cause in our daily lives, especially when there are simple actions that can become highly beneficial.
This possibility of transcendence is what has motivated me throughout my course of study. I think that a project with a good balance between the environment, the social areas, and the economy, will thrive easily, entailing benefits to the three axes. How the axes depend on each other becomes fascinating. For instance, I recently carried out a project with the Hogar Ortigosa, a non-profit organization that gives a new opportunity to girls and young women who are in vulnerable economic and social situations. They have considerable expenses from the use of electricity. Therefore, I proposed using passive systems, higher efficiency electrical equipment and installing photovoltaic cells, thus making significant savings that will allow the organization to provide the population it looks after with a better quality of life and better services.
I would like to focus my career on projects of this type as they allow us to create a positive impact while at the same time they are great learning experiences. This is especially true when working with multidisciplinary teams, which can definitely be a challenge, but with the right communication and willingness to work as a group, it is possible to innovate and produce solutions.
Photo by: UDEM archive
