Florida Power & Light renewed its capstone gift agreement with the College of Engineering, paving the way for further collaboration and opportunities for students.
“We are proud to partner with FPL in providing real-world training to our students,” said Pratim Biswas, dean of the College of Engineering, “and collaborating with them on impactful research projects.”
“The future of our relationship with the College is extremely bright,” said Michael Jarro, Vice President of Distribution Operations at FPL. “This agreement makes that future even brighter.”
How FPL mentors and hires Miami Engineering students
The College requires its seniors to team up and complete a senior design capstone project in order to graduate. The College hosts the annual Senior Design Expo to showcase the work of these student teams to the public and potential employers.
Through FPL’s partnership with the College, the company works with a number of student teams each year to come up with solutions to practical issues FPL wants to solve.
From working on real-time electrical outage monitoring to predicting state-wide street light damage after a storm, “FPL makes sure students are mentored throughout the senior capstone project,” said Nina Miville, associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “They assign points of contact within the company to guide students and often offer them a job after the project is done.”
Toni-Ann Farquharson, a student in the BS/MS Industrial & Systems Engineering Program, is leading this year’s FPL senior design capstone project, which is focused on finding the optimal way to secure electrical facilities. There are thousands of electrical facilities around the country, helping distribute the nation’s electricity needs. However, security is uneven and costly. This year’s FPL senior design capstone project uses modeling and data analysis to determine ideal camera placement for effective and efficient security.
“Working with FPL on this security optimization project has challenged me in new ways and allowed me to grow both personally and professionally,” said Farquharson. “I learned a new programming language within a short timeframe and created a fully functioning algorithm to detect optimal locations for cameras in any given facility. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to work with professionals in the industry and apply the project management and engineering techniques I've learned here at the University of Miami.”
“This project could produce an algorithm that could even be applied to further optimize automated stores like Amazon’s,” said Jaime Buitrago, capstone lecturer in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “Automated stores typically have an abundance of cameras, similar to electrical infrastructure, and could benefit from more efficient camera distribution.
“These capstone projects enable our students to create solutions that will be implemented in the real world,” Buitrago added.
FPL’s commitment to the College and University
As alumni and parents of current students, FPL leaders like Jarro have long-standing connections to the College of Engineering and the University of Miami.
“I graduated from the College’s mechanical engineering program in 1997,” Jarro said, “and now I’m proud to say that my son Justin is also studying mechanical engineering at the College of Engineering.”
“Through this partnership,” Jarro added, “I feel that I’m helping to give back to students that were once in my position, hungry for knowledge and eager to get out in the world and make an impact.”
Parallel to this partnership with the College, FPL has made deep investments in the University’s energy infrastructure, including improving its grid resilience, and upgrading all underground cables to the University, reducing potential impacts from disasters and extreme weather.
