Abel Atsbaha is a fourth-year Mechanical Engineering student at San José State University who is driven by innovation and a vision to improve the efficiency of modern technology, especially for medical and automotive devices. Originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Abel moved to the United States in 2019, becoming the first in his family to pursue higher education in the U.S. Inspired early on by his father’s work as a civil engineer, he was fascinated by the way ideas on paper could be transformed into real-world structures. His interest solidified in high school through a biology class, sparking his desire to explore medical applications like surgical robotics—leading him to pursue Mechanical Engineering with a focus on mechatronics. Last summer, Abel interned at Sunbelt Controls in their rotational program that exposed him to multiple disciplines within building automation. As a controls design engineer, he got to work on designing a control system and creating intuitive Human-Mach...