Rebecca Testa

Major: Electrical Engineering
Minor: Mathematics
Hometown: North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania

For Rebecca Testa, the end-of-class-bell merely signals the beginning of continued learning. She actively pursues her growth beyond the classroom, practicing her skills through internships, community service, and research.

"I have been able to apply information from my classes to real projects," she said. "This has solidified my understanding of engineering concepts and their importance, allowing me to grow into a much better engineer."

Testa completed an internship last summer with Huntingdon Ingalls Industries in Dayton, Ohio, working as an embedded systems engineer. She will return for another internship this summer. She also completed an internship at Marathon Petroleum as an electrical reliability engineer at the refinery in Anacortes, Washington, after her first year at Rose-Hulman.

On campus, Testa is an athlete on both the cross country and track and field teams. She served as the commuter/transfer orientation leader during New Student Orientation. She is a member of Chi Omega sorority, as well as the corresponding secretary for IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu, the honor society for electrical and computer engineering students. She also serves as the Noblitt Scholars Service Committee Lead.

"The Noblitt Scholars Program has allowed me to build my leadership skills and character by providing me with the opportunity to take on a leadership role and become more involved in the Rose-Hulman and Terre Haute communities," Testa said. "I have learned to communicate clearly with community organizations, to coordinate groups of people effectively, and to turn questions and feedback into action."

Testa is part of an Evolvable Hardware research team working with Jason Yoder, PhD, assistant professor of computer science and software engineering, to improve the evolution of analog circuits on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Testa's role is to develop an intermediate representation of a particular FPGA bitstream to reduce the search space of hardware evolution experiments.

"Participation in research and co-curriculars has heightened my growth as an electrical engineer by allowing me to dive more deeply into specific topics and apply what I learn in the classroom to real projects in the field," she said. "I have applied what I learned about FPGAs in my classes, but I have also learned much more about how FPGAs work and had more opportunities to program them because of my involvement in research.

Previously, Testa has researched random interior optimization calculations with Leanne Holder, PhD, professor of mathematics, leading an activity at the annual Sonia Math Day event where students worked with an electrical circuit to create their own artwork. She was also involved in the Rose-Hulman Electric Propulsion Group during her first two years of college, through which she worked to develop a gridded ion thruster.

Her continued learning and curiosity have given Testa a deep understanding of the intersection of classroom learning and real-world applications, poising her well as she takes her skills beyond campus and into her career.