Welcome!  My name is Alex Saucedo.  Originally from Madison HS in San Antonio, TX, I am now currently a Senior Electrical-Engineering Biomedical Specialization major at SMU. I will also graduate with a minor in Chemistry. I personally chose the Lyle School of Engineering due to the staff/faculty emphasis on developing well-rounded engineers with great “soft” skills and superb technical skills. Soft skills, such as one’s ability to communicate, lead, problem-solve, and even one’s self confidence levels are seen as the defining factors in hiring a potential employee. Starting from my first EE class, professors emphasized these skills, and have made an attempt to always connect these skills with the technical work learned during the course.

During the summer of 2012 I was given a return offer at Texas Instruments in Plano, TX. I worked for the Digital Light Processing (DLP) division as an applications engineer for their product support team. The product support team handles customer interface for all aspects of DLP: Front Projection, Cinema, Pico-Projection, and Applied Technologies. Given problems or ideas from our customers such as Mitsubishi, Barco, or Panasonic; applications engineers had to re-create this problem back in Plano, and create/design a solution for the customer. I worked directly with our customers, so early morning calls to India or late night discussions with Japanese TI engineers were quite common! During the summer I also designed completely new firmware for a brand new ASIC. This firmware was picked up by a few of the customers to help guide them for their own specific projector firmware design. After my final presentation in the summer, the CEO of DLP and my team manager both congratulated me and were astounded by my presentation skills. This is exactly how the Lyle School of Engineering helped me. Without the opportunity to work together in teams, present the work done to my classes, and have direct constructive criticism from my professors, I would have not been able to effectively recognize the customer’s problems and develop a concise and presentable solution for them. Lyle has given me the confidence not only in my technical abilities to work at TI, but my ability to move up within the company and effectively help and support TI’s endeavors. I was fortunate enough to receive a full-time offer as an applications engineer upon graduation.

Outside of school, I am very active within my IFC fraternity Beta Theta Pi. I have served as judicial chair and philanthropy chair for Beta. I serve as captain for Beta’s intramural football team, and hope to take a continual leadership role until I graduate. I work as a Staff Supervisor at the Dedman Rec Center, and I am co-founder and publicity chair for the Mustang Fitness Club. Personal nutrition and fitness is one of my passions, and so the main goal of this club is to promote that within the SMU community. Trending more towards the “biomedical” side of my degree, I participate in the Alpha Epsilon Delta pre-medical honors society at SMU. I recently finished helping research on Human African Trypanosomiasis under the guidance of Dr. Larry Ruben at Dedman Life Sciences. I also volunteer a few days out of the week at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas on the cardiac floor. Finally, I am a member of Ambassadors for Prospective Engineering Students where I try to actively engage recruited prospective engineering students in the numerous opportunities that Lyle has to offer.

One of the greatest moments of my academic career and of my life occurred on November 2012. I was given early acceptances to 6 out of the 8 medical schools in Texas I applied to. During the summer of 2012 I had the opportunity to interview at each medical school and was amazed at the quality of education, doctors, and hospitals Texas has to offer. I have yet to make a decision on which school to attend upon graduation as each school has very unique qualities. However, my top choices include: UT Southwestern Medical Center, Baylor College of Medicine, UT Health Science Center San Antonio, and UT Health Science Center Houston.