Saif is a senior in IE working towards a minor in Management and his certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Originally from Cairo, Egypt, Saif came to Purdue in 2018 and plans to graduate this spring.

 

Over the past five years, Saif has tried and succeeded in many  endeavors. He has been a part of the club tennis team, worked for Freshens and Purdue Rally Line, and interned at Kuwait Energy and Hill International. One of his projects at Hill International included helping to engineer a driverless monorail line to connect all the provinces of Egypt!

 

Saif entered Purdue as a Mechanical Engineering Technology student, but he knew he wanted to change majors by the end of his first semester. Saif’s initial interpretation of IE was a common perception: IE serves a crossover between business, finance, and engineering. While this is an accurate description of IE, he says his understanding of Industrial Engineering grew once he entered the major: “I started taking the classes, and I realized the variety and the broadness of IE is way bigger than what I thought.” An IE education touches on elements of many fields, and Saif has enjoyed exploring everything from construction engineering to software and coding during his time at Purdue.

 

Saif and his team won first place at the Senior Design Poster Symposium for their project that introduced a new blade design for Amazon's SmartPac machines. Starting this year, the design will be tested on half of the SmartPac machines in North America.

 

Academic achievements haven’t been the only source of success for Saif. Since 2018, he has also been on a weight loss journey, and has lost nearly 115 pounds! He says that consistency and a proper mindset have helped him achieve his goals and overcome significant obstacles.

 

Every student faces challenges when coming to college, and Saif’s advice to the incoming engineering class is to study hard. “The way you’ve been studying in high school is probably not going to cut it,” he says, “Turn it up a notch, starting on the very first day.” He also says to focus on FYE classes: “They build the foundation, and they will always be popping back up in all your other classes, and professors will assume you know it. So don’t try and just pass the class, try and ace it.”

 

His last piece of advice is to focus on your own journey. “Don’t look at other majors and how they’re spending their time. Try and focus on the goal you are here to achieve, and it’s going to take a lot of hard work, time, and brain power, but it is doable. I’m a firm believer that if a person has done something before, then there is no reason for you to not be able to do it as well. It’s all mental blocks.”