Kevin Hoang  

Hi Miguel, how are you?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Good. How are you?

Kevin Hoang  

I'm doing good. Thank you for asking. Yeah. So just introduce myself a little bit. My name is Kevin. I'm a senior at Peachtree Ridge High School. It's, like 30 minutes around the Atlanta area in Georgia. And the reason I'm doing this interview here is because as a first gen student who will go into college next year, because no one in my family has ever gone down and furthered their education, going into college, I just wanted to reach out to PhD students like yourself, who are going into STEM, like for you, it's mechanical engineering, and wanted to seek advice and make that available to other students like myself.

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

honestly, that's extremely awesome. I'm really glad that you're doing that, because I wish I had something like that when I was going into college. So that's very great that you're doing this.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, of course. Um, so I my list of questions here. So whenever you're ready, let me know. And we can get started. Yeah, I'm ready. Alright, so you go, can you start by sharing a bit about yourself in your background for entering college?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, so I'm, I'm originally Puerto Rican, my entire family's Puerto Rican. And I am a first gen college student. And actually, for the most part, first gen for even graduate high school, most of my family didn't, didn't even graduate high school or get a GED or anything. And so then I went into undergrad at Manhattan College, I did it for mechanical engineering. And after getting my bachelor's there, I moved on to a PhD program, which is here at Johns Hopkins University, also in mechanical engineering, but it's specialized in aerospace engineering application specifically, but the PhD itself is in mechanical engineering. And my focus is on fluid dynamics and multi phase flow in aerospace applications. Most of them are one like particle deposition and jet engines. And then the other application is a deposition of particles from a lunar lander landing on the lunar surface or a martian surface to so that's most of the work that I do right now.

Kevin Hoang  

That's pretty cool. Yeah, I saw you did work for NASA. Correct?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah. So I did some work for NASA two years ago at NASA Marshall. That was for the Lunar Lander stuff that was in a vacuum chamber, where we had like a small jet and pinching on a granular surface, that surface was kind of there was a lunar stimulant. So it was a bunch of particles that are like the lunar soil. And right now I have a NASA fellowship, that basically pays for my entire PhD. So they, they pay for the whole thing, and they give me a stipend on top of that. And with that, I do like in sort of internship at NASA. Every year, for two and a half months, I go to a different NASA center, and I do some work for them. So this this past summer, I was in the Kennedy Space Center, doing some stuff there.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, that's, that's very cool, actually. So before entering your undergrad years, how did you actually develop a passion for mechanical engineer? And how did you know that you wanted to pursue the

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, so I didn't, I didn't originally, I didn't know that I was gonna end up in engineering because I was actually very into music. I was a musician. I was a percussionist. And that was kind of my thing. That's what I was going to do. Eventually, I, I kind of realized that maybe I wouldn't make that much money as a musician. So I started looking into other things. And at the time, I was doing pretty well in math and science subjects in high school. And so I went to what started it for me because none of my family knew anything about engineering, since none of them even graduated high school. What started it for me was I was really into video games. I love playing video games. So I looked into like, what kind of people make video games and that's how I found software engineering. From there, I kind of found out about engineering looked into it further, and then found out about mechanical engineering, which I liked more because it's very mechanical engineering is extremely general. It can it can, mechanical engineering can be in pretty much any field as opposed to like electrical and civil Work chemical that are usually confined to different specific fields like civil was confined to making buildings, skyscrapers, bridges, stuff like that electrical engineering is confined to circuits and stuff like that, while mechanical engineering is extremely broad, you can be pretty much anything with mechanical engineering. So that's what drove me towards that. And I wanted to pursue it from there. So I just decided that I wanted to do it in high school and then went on in undergrad.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, so um, once you completed your undergrad years, what made you want to further your education and then go all the way up to a PhD?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, so it was mostly I had some research opportunities when I was an undergrad, which I highly recommend everyone does to their undergrad University, try your best to get into research opportunities, either with a lab at your school, or in my case, mice, my undergrad wasn't very research heavy. So I had to find research opportunities outside of my school. And I did that through the National Science Foundation has something called research experience for undergraduates. That's the acronym is rd you. And that's how I got into research, I applied for some of those opportunities. And I was able to do research for 10 weeks in Germany, at a German university where I got to, it was developing a velocity sensor for in automated trim system in Germany. And from there, I kind of really realized that I love research, because I like the idea of coming up with new ideas, and actually being able to implement them. And I also found out at the time that a lot of engineers that just graduate with just their bachelor's degree, a lot of them end up in positions that we call PowerPoint engineers, where basically all they do is like, give presentations about stuff that has already been made, or like do a bunch of cat work and stuff like that, like a lot of them just work on iterating on things that have already been made. And I wanted to actually do, I wanted to create new things, I wanted to explore what's out there. So that's why I decided to go into a PhD, where once you have your doctorate, as an engineer, you have a lot more intellectual freedom, you have the opportunity to really explore what questions you have and create new technology. So

Kevin Hoang  

yeah, for sure. And speaking about that past research, what sort of projects are you currently working on now?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, so right now, it's mainly the jet engine deposition, and the and what I mentioned before of the lunar lander descending on the surface, for both of those applications, they involve particles and air flow at extreme temperatures. So I'm currently designing a facility that we're going to have in Hopkins within the next few months, that's going to be a like a duct that is gonna have airflow, like 3040 meters per second, that's around 70 miles per hour. And it's going to be at 1100 degrees Celsius. So that's around 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. And the idea is, we're going to be using glass beads which are spherical, and they melt at these temperatures. And that's to kind of simulate how in a jet engine, you would have volcanic ash that gets ingested into the jet engine, and it will melt and then start to deposit on the blades. And which causes significant issues. And even on the moon. When the lunar lander comes down on the surface, the extreme temperatures of that of that jet, are is going to melt the lunar surface, it's going to melt the particles on there and sensor them together. And so that's kind of what we're studying, we're looking at, at these temperatures, how do these particles move and react with the flow? How does the melting affect how they get carried over to the surface and deposit on the surface? Stuff like that? So that's the that's the main work that I'm doing right now.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, and going adding on to that when do you know, like, that research or is complete, like after doing a whole bunch of simulations and tests? When do you when do you know, like, whatever you're working on is finalized and added to completed statements.

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Well, that's that's the fun thing about PhD research is that it's never ever complete. Because the best the most interesting thing is, in research, you have a question. And a lot of times what happens is, it's rare for that question that you asked to be the one that actually gets answered. Because typically what ends up happening is you ask a question, and then you build a facility or you build whatever or that you've run a simulation? To solve that, that question. And then what ends up happening is that you realize that maybe that question wasn't the right question. And then you have to change the question. And then now you're updating your question to, to what you're currently figuring out, right? Because maybe what you thought was going to happen originally, is just a part of it. And maybe there's an entire branching of other like physics or phenomena that you didn't even know of. So for researchers, that never finishes, and that's, that's kind of the tough part. Because you sometimes you have to kind of know when to stop yourself and be like, Okay, this is enough. So in research, it's mostly about, you have to be able to set your own goals and keep the scope within something that you could actually do, because you're gonna add them they're gonna come to the end of your PhD, and D are defense or dissertation or whatever. And there's still going to be questions that that are that you're going to ask that you won't be able to answer. And that's just going to be you're gonna have to leave it up to the next person who's going to be working on it.

Kevin Hoang  

Yep, sure. And then I'm speaking about your work for NASA. What type of people do you work with? Are you working with other PhD students like yourself? Or are they more like more engineers,

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

it's kind of a pretty big mishmash, because NASA recruits all over. So I mean, there's, there's a few PhDs, here and there. But a lot of them are masters, at least, there's very few that that work at NASA that just have a bachelor's, most of them either have a master's degree. And then if they are like, what we call PIs, or primary principal investigators, those are the people that run the projects that like very large projects that are like come up with the research ideas, usually those people are the ones with the PhDs. And then the people that that do the experiments underneath them that that they kind of the people that they run are usually have masters. And that's usually around the area. But then even outside of that a lot of machinists are there too. And NASA so you work with machinists all the time, to kind of if you're an experimentalist to machine, the components that you work with, so those people probably are came out and just vocational school and never even went to college. So it's kind of a whole big mishmash, you kind of see everyone, but the best part is at NASA, every everyone is extremely nice. And they're all extremely helpful.

Kevin Hoang  

Oh, yeah, for sure. And then, um, you talked about the machinists and the people who work with them. So I'm going to assume you guys also use CAD software, or have you been using CAD software personally? And for what did you use it for?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, I'm actually currently doing a lot of CAD, right now, to design the facility that I'm working on right now. That's not extremely typical, at least for PhD students. For that, it depends on what you're doing. First of all, you if you to do like CAD work and design work, you would have to be an experimentalist, that computational s would never do that stuff, like someone who's doing simulations would never usually design or anything like that. So I'm an experimentalist. So I don't do, we do some simulations here and there, but it's mostly experimental work. And so and then on top of that, my lab specializes in creating kind of smaller facilities that are very highly controlled. And so because of that, we usually end up building our own custom designs for everything. And so because of that, I usually have to design my own facility. So I ended up doing a lot of CAD work and stuff like that. But there's some other experimental labs, or graduate schools where a lot of the things that they do are like very big picture, like they have like, they're doing experiments on a jet engine, you're not going to be designing a jet engine, you're probably going to be, you're probably going to get one from a company and then just work on it. So it kind of depends on on the work that you do. If it's very fundamental, very physics base, then most likely, you're going to be doing your own stuff, and you're going to be designing and everything. But if it's like big picture like jet engines, wind tunnels, hypersonic wind tunnels, that stuff are pretty much are already made by someone else. And you're just doing experiments.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah. And when you say facilities, are you talking about like a room where the experiment is conducted? Or is it

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

usually when I say facility that I'm talking about just the not the room that is conducted? The room that is conducted? We usually just call it lab Um, but the facility would kind of be the contraption itself. Yeah.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah. And then going back to your, like, undergrad years and your years there, John Johns Hopkins, can you describe a challenge that you face?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, I mean, so coming from my family, we didn't have a lot of money. So honestly, the biggest challenge that I had to face was being able to pay for undergrad for for grad school, it's not an issue. Because if you're an engineering and you're doing grad school, if you're not getting paid to be to do your PhD, then you're doing it wrong. That's what everyone says. So for PhD, you should always be getting paid to be your PhD. For undergrad, obviously, that's a very different story, you have to pay to go to college. So that was probably the biggest hurdle for me, and probably for a lot of first gen students. These are a lot of first generation students don't, their families don't make a ton of money. But for me, it was mostly just the way that I got around where it came, it was just constantly applying for absolutely every single thing I could possibly find every scholarship, like everything I didn't, it didn't matter to me if I if I felt like I had zero chance of getting it I still applied. And a lot of times I would end up being surprised, and I ended up getting it anyway.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, those scholarships cover a lot or did you like during your undergrad years did you also have to take time to do other side jobs.

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

So I did have to do some side jobs in my junior year and senior year because they started to increase tuition. My freshman sophomore year, it was mostly just paid for by scholarships. My junior year and senior year though I had to, I applied for more through my school. And also there's a there's a very big scholarship that I should mention that helped me a lot is called the Goldwater Scholarship. It's a very competitive scholarship to get but it's for undergrads and it gives them $7,500 For a year. And it is probably one of the if not the most prestigious STEM Awards that you could get in the entire country. So that, if you will, you can apply for the Goldwater Scholarship, I highly recommend that that saved me. But besides that I did. In my junior year and senior year, I worked as a tutor, which helped out a lot to that, that gave me some money to be able to pay college. But on top of that being a tutor actually really helped me in my classes, because I kind of had to refresh myself on old courses. And to be able to teach something is very different than just like knowing it. Because if you can actually teach it, you will know it way, way better. And you'll start to think about it in different ways. Because the person that you're tutoring will ask questions that you would never thought of. And that's going to cause you to have a different perspective on things. And that helps me tremendously, both financially and just for my engineering program.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah. And then speaking about the Goldwater Scholarship, is there is it just like something that you apply for in do you have to submit any of your like to submit projects or anything like that.

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

So for the Goldwater Scholarship, that one is that one is research based. So you have to submit a research proposal. The proposal doesn't isn't actually something that they expect you to do. So that's a little different from like a if you're applying for a PhD fellowship, usually you would submit a proposal and if you get funded, then what you propose is what you do for your PhD. But for the Goldwater and undergrad, you submit a proposal just for them to see if you can propose a research topic or research study. If you get awarded that that scholarship, you don't have to do what you propose. It's just it's their way of seeing like, can you put a plan together for something? Because that's something that you're going to have to do during your PhD? Yeah, sure. And besides that, you have to submit like a personal statement and get recommendation letters and stuff like that.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah. And then my next question for you is, can you share a mentor or advisor who has greatly influenced your career?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

So I wouldn't say that there's a specific person, I think it's more of like a collection of people and most of them are more professors throughout my undergrad. So if I weren't saying to give any other advice, I would definitely say that see to the best of your ability try to become friends with your professors. Are because they helped me tremendously. And literally, almost any decision that I had today, like education wise, because as a first gen student, I didn't really have the chance to converse with my parents or anyone in my family about it because they didn't really unpredictable understand the situation. But professors, I mean, they've gone through it. Like they, they know exactly what to do. And they've seen so many students make mistakes and go through all these things. So if you become friends with the professors, they are, like going to be your backbone. Those are the people that I went to all the time for, for academic advice, especially for picking what what school I was going to for grad school I went to I was in their offices constantly, like going through all of my options with them and everything. And also help when you when you have to ask them for recommendation letters to already have those people in your back pocket. And the really, the way that I became friends with most of them is just showing up to their office hours, when like outside of class and stuff they usually professors in once you get into college professors will have office hours. So those are hours outside of their usual class time where you get to ask them questions about the work and stuff. So it was mostly just me going and hanging out in their office hours asking them questions, and then just talking to them.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah. And then you said you also applied to other grad schools. Would you mind mentioning which one or which other ones you apply to?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, I applied to probably too many. So Georgia Tech was one of them, actually. So the two that the two that I was stuck between was Georgia Tech and Johns Hopkins. Another one that I applied to was Virginia Tech. And then I applied to grad school at my university for my undergrad, but they only had a master's program. So it wasn't that wasn't for PhD. I also applied for I think, Stanford and MIT. What else did I apply? I applied for University of Pittsburgh. And Purdue. Purdue is a very good school for aerospace, too. So as Georgia Tech, of course, Georgia Tech is well known for aerospace. And those are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. I went alrighty, as well.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, in between. You said Georgia Tech and Johns Hopkins. Why did you choose Johns Hopkins?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Totally. Yeah, so there's one there was a couple of reasons for that. And one of them is that the stipend that Johns Hopkins was high. And on top of the Atlanta is extremely expensive, like insanely expensive to live in. San, which I'm sure you know. And I mean, they gave me a pretty good stipend basically gave me a presidential fellowship on top of the normal stipend. But still, Atlanta was just very expensive. Also, Georgia Tech had, I don't know if things have changed, but at the time, they had this reputation of hiring more PhD students so that they can actually afford. And so usually, what happened in at least in most of the labs that I've heard, is that in the first year, it's extremely cutthroat. And everyone is out to get everyone else. And because they because they they're taking in more people than they can afford. So they have to cut people out, right. And I just didn't like the idea of being in an environment where people aren't willing to help each other. competing against each other. Yeah. And I talked to some some students who went into grad school at Georgia Tech that we're very excited and gung ho about getting their PhD, but then Georgia Tech just like killed that for them. Because they were just so miserable. Because everybody was they felt like they were alone, like everybody was out to get. I liked the fact that at Johns Hopkins here, everyone is very helpful for each other. It's a it's a much smaller community. It's a smaller PhD program, because at Hopkins, they're very selective. So if, if you get selected at Hopkins, you're guaranteed to have your PhD paid for it. Nobody has to do work on top of their PhD to pay for. And so because of that kind of a smaller community, and they tried to really retain their people, so everybody always is constantly trying to help each other. So that's the main reason why I ended up choosing Hopkins. Also, the advisor that I work with was like, Hey, I work with NASA. And I was like, cool. I like NASA. So yeah.

Kevin Hoang  

Is that how you got the opportunity to work with NASA yourself?

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, it's it was mainly through the connections of my advisory, he already had some connections at NASA. And so that's how it started two years ago at the experiment in the vacuum chamber, from that I got connections because I was at NASA Marshall. So from that I got to meet a lot of NASA personnel to then eventually apply for the fellowship. And then at that point, people already knew me. And, and I already had several connections. So from there it was, it was pretty easy transition to, to. I mean, at this point, I basically worked for NASA, after the fellowship, and I have to go to a NASA facility every year. So

Kevin Hoang  

that's very cool to see that you work for NASA. Yeah. Yeah. So what other general advice would you have for other high schoolers, like myself, who are first gen who might be interested in following a similar career path as your

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

it's mainly the, like, what I said about making friends with your professors, I think that that really is the main point. Because if it wasn't for that, I don't know where I wouldn't be like most of the decisions, and most of the programs that I've been in, is because I became very good friends with my professors. And especially because a lot of them wrote glowing recommendation letters about me that I was able to get into a lot of these programs. I mean, when when I was going around doing my like, after I applied for PhD, what typically what happens is that the the schools that accept you, they will pay for you to fly out there, they will pay for your hotel and everything, so that you can meet the professors and go to the school. And every time I went to a new school, all of the professors like, praised how like how the professor's like just gushed about me in the recommendation letters. So it's, it's really, it's really that, I would try my best to be friends with the professors. And it's really because of what I said that a lot of times as a first gen student, you're going to have several moments in throughout undergrad, where you're going to feel like you can't really discuss what you're going through with your family because they just don't understand what it is. So being able to talk about that with professors who have gone through it. And obviously, you're going to be talking with your friends too. But being able to talk to like people who have gone through it already, and have come out the other side. That's extremely important.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah. And then my last question for you is looking back at the beginning of your academic journey, what do you wish you knew then that you know now

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

I honestly I wish I was not as I was, I was like, way too, into like studying all the time, like constantly. And I wish that I would learn how to relax sometimes. Because it is it's definitely a balance that you have to do. You can't obviously I'm not saying like go party. That's not ideal. As an engineer, you cannot do that. Also, don't just stick your head in the books constantly. I know. And this is important for your first gen students to because first gen students have a have this thing where they feel like they need to go above and beyond everyone else. To so that they can seem like they're way ahead, right? That's a very common thing. But there, there has to be a balance because you will burn out. And then you will hit a big load if you don't have that back. And so making sure that you have a balance, that's what I will recommend. Because it doesn't matter how much you study, you're still going to make a negative sign error on your test that is going to get at some point subtracted. And you're just gonna have to deal with.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, sure. Yeah, those are all my questions for you.

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, thank you for those. Yeah. So

Kevin Hoang  

I wanted to end this by saying thank you for joining me and taking your time. I really found our conversation to be very helpful. And you'll be offered great advice to what I can also share in spirit to other high schoolers like myself, so I want to thank

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

ya, thank you. This was cool. I'm glad to be given. So if you need anything else, just let me know if you need any help with anything else with getting into undergrad, or if you want me to send you some links for scholarships and stuff I'd be happy to. Yeah, that'd be so great. Yeah, actually, it might be I can send you my my resume too, because then you would see all of the scholarships that I that I applied for. And so that would probably be a good way of doing it.

Kevin Hoang  

Yeah, I'd be very happy if you did it. Yeah, for sure. All right. Thank you for talking with me.

Miguel X. Diaz Lopez  

Yeah, thank you. I will see you You