As the final moments of the national championship game played out, Jacob Ahrens stood shoulder to shoulder with his dad and brother, watching the University of Miami compete on college football’s biggest stage. His father, who grew up in South Florida, passed his Hurricanes fandom down early, and for years, they cheered on the Canes from Illinois. For Ahrens it would be the last football game he would attend as a student.
That sense of loyalty mirrors how Ahrens, who is graduating with a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from the College of Engineering, approached his education. He consistently showed up to lead projects and support his peers.
That mindset carried directly into his professional experiences. As a software engineering intern at Motorola Solutions, Ahrens worked on embedded software systems already deployed in the field. When a defect surfaced that affected more than 20,000 active devices, Ahrens traced the failure through the production codebase, implemented a fix and validated it across live configurations. Over the course of his internship, he also addressed more than 200 flagged code risks, helping strengthen system reliability across a platform that is used daily.
He also worked as an AI fellow with the Miami Marlins, where he was a part of the organization’s baseball operations and player development pipeline. There, Ahrens helped build production backend systems using FastAPI, Cloud SQL and Google Kubernetes Engine to support internal tools that track and organize player performance data.
Working inside a major company as well as a professional Major League Baseball organization exposed him to real-world engineering problems and solutions.
Those experiences were layered onto an already demanding academic path. Aside from adding a computer science major, Ahrens earned invitations to Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi, two invitation‑only engineering honor societies that recognize academic excellence and professional character.
His involvement with Eta Kappa Nu became central to his time at the University of Miami. As the chapter’s president, Ahrens focused on supporting his peers by organizing tutoring programs and connecting underclassmen to research opportunities. He carried that same mentorship focus into his roles as a Google lead for the Google Developer Group on campus and vice president of recruitment for Kappa Theta Pi, a professional technology fraternity.
“Jacob is one of those students you can always count on. He puts in the work and genuinely cares about doing things the right way,” said Lokesh Ramamoorthi, a senior lecturer in electrical and computer engineering and Ahrens’ faculty adviser. “What stands out to me, beyond his technical skills, is how he supports the people around him. Whether leading a team or solving a tough problem, Jacob brings a level of maturity and commitment that is hard to teach. It has been really rewarding to watch him grow during his time at the University of Miami.”
When asked what problem he is most eager to solve as an engineer, Ahrens keeps the answer simple.
“I just want to work on something useful,” he said. “Something that genuinely improves someone else’s life, even if it doesn’t affect me directly.”
His advice to incoming students reflects the same philosophy that shaped his own experience.
“Get involved early,” he said. “The most important things I learned here came from participating, serving and taking responsibility beyond the classroom.”
