Patricia Garcia is a senior at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, FL spearheading the brand-new interdisciplinary engineering degree with a concentration in manufacturing engineering and minor in business management. She is passionate about utilizing a systems-perspective to collaborate across disciplines and designing innovative, human-centered solutions to various social challenges.

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During her early undergraduate years, she traded the traditional Miami swimsuit for a lab coat as she traveled over a thousand miles to take on full-time summer research positions at renowned institutions. From engineering 3D skeletal muscle tissue at MIT to developing a piezoelectrect sensor/pulse sensing system to detect pressure changes of the radial artery at the University of California Berkeley (jointly with the Tsinghua–UC Berkeley Shenzhen Institute), she came to understand the importance of interdisciplinary cross-cultural collaboration.

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The transferable skills she gained in the research laboratory prepared her tremendously for her shift to industry, despite the remote setting. Last summer, she had the opportunity to intern at Medtronic as a manufacturing engineer.

While working in these roles, she realized that in her journey to be more than a one-dimensional engineer, she was also identifying other passions. During her research experience at UC Berkeley, she decided to nurture her entrepreneurial spirit and begin working towards the development of her startup focused on creating more inclusive and sustainable college campuses. She is the founder and CEO of “college thrifts”, an inclusive peer to peer platform for students/alumni to buy/sell their gently used college branded items and network amongst users The "college thrifts" goal is to create more inclusive and sustainable institutions of higher education, supporting economic development amongst college students, and creating mentorship opportunities. We are directly addressing 4 UN SDGs which include Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, Goal 13: Climate Action, and Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. Being able to translate technical success into market success by understanding the users resulted in over $20,000 from pitch competition wins and features in various media publications within the past year.

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Outside of the classroom and entrepreneurial endeavors, Patricia enjoys giving back to the Miami community in the form of mentorship in hopes of inspiring the next generation of students to pursue STEM careers. In 2020, Patricia was selected as the student face for the national TECHNOLOchicas campaign/commercial which aired on Univision stations across the nation. TECHNOLOchicas is a national initiative of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and the Televisa Foundation designed to raise awareness among young Latinas and their families about opportunities and careers in technology.