Perpetual startup
Sat Sugita selected as College of Engineering graduating student speaker
Sugita, part of the first class of industrial & systems engineering majors and full-time intern with Treeswift, is no stranger to startup culture.
Satomi Sugita was born in California before moving to Japan and eventually spending most of her early years in the Philippines. Along the way, the industrial & systems engineering major found comfort with change, particularly as one of the first to experience a new curriculum.
“Every school that I’ve been to since elementary, I’ve been subjected to a brand new curriculum,” she said. “So that adaptability is something I developed early-on.”
Now, Sugita will share her journey and story with the College of Engineering’s class of 2022 as the student speaker during the May 4th ceremony.
She will be joined by Robert Rashford, ENG, ‘83, the alumni keynote speaker.
“Coming to the States (and to Temple) I was fully expecting to be…kind of detached as a minority, but freshman year at Temple, I found the Filipino club,” she said.
“It was exciting to tell them things about our culture and the excitement they all had for that made me appreciate our culture so much more.”
Sugita has also found a community in the Society of Women Engineers, having served on the executive board for the past three years and the current president of the Temple chapter.
She has maintained a busy schedule, currently working as a full-time intern at Treeswift, a robotics company that provides data to the forestry industry.
“We fly drones in the field and collect data for forestry companies on how much timber they can expect,” she said. “We are looking to expand into carbon counts, seedling survival, and other parts of the industry that have been untapped because people have had to do this work manually.”
Sugita was also part of the Temple chapter of Industrial & Systems Engineering Society as well as an undergraduate team, Simulation Nation, that took third place at the Simio Student Design Competition in December, 2021. Their project was the highest-placing undergraduate project, finishing behind two graduate-level teams.
As she looks to the future, her past is grounded in the constant buzz of a startup.
“The most exciting thing about working in a startup is that you get to wear multiple hats,” she said. “Even if I don’t work with my current company after graduation…every little thing you do contributes to the whole and makes a long-lasting impact.”
The College of Engineering Spring 2022 graduation ceremony is scheduled for May 4 at McGonigle Hall. Learn more.
Built with Shorthand