There is no Nobel Prize for engineering. But there should be. By building technological wonders from cars to computers, engineers shape the world around us and drive Nobel-worthy scientific breakthroughs. Just ask Karina Tañon-De Jesús, a senior studying electrical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez. As a student, she is already developing game-changing tools to support scientists. A program she co-designed makes it possible to maintain the giant collecting dish for one of the world’s largest and most vital radio telescopes, the Arecibo Observatory.

Arecibo’s thousand-foot dish is covered in 38,000 aluminum panels each measuring three by six feet. To get a sense of its scale, imagine drawing a circle around twenty-eight school buses parked in a line. Now picture this: how would you keep such a big structure in flawless working order? You can’t walk on the dish because you would break its panels. You can’t directly inspect the panels from the dish’s underside, because it would take too long and you can’t reach them all. If the reflector’s panels are compromised, you can’t get accurate data from the receiver. These are the problems Karina and her team were determined to fix. They succeeded by developing a drone that can fly over the entire structure and detect what panels need to be repaired or replaced. It’s an elegant and cost-effective solution for maintaining a piece of equipment scientists from all over the world use for their research.

“Any damage to the panels can disrupt the signals and corrupt the data collected by the receiver,” says Karina. “Keeping all of the panels in good condition is critical for data integrity.”

Located in a stunning national park in northern Puerto Rico, Arecibo Observatory was the ideal spot for building a radio telescope for reasons that might surprise you. Let’s think about that giant reflector again for a moment. Such a big spherical structure needs to fit inside a large cavity in the ground. Arecibo’s massive karst sinkhole – a type of depression created when dolomite, gypsum and limestone dissolve – was the perfect size for the dish. The site’s proximity to the equator was equally important because it’s the only place on the planet where observers have access to the entire sky regardless of the Earth’s rotation.

Arecibo is the origin of many important scientific breakthroughs. It’s where one team of scientists first imaged an asteroid and another is listening for extraterrestrial life in the universe. At a high level, the equipment consists of the giant spherical reflector monitored by Karina and her team. Nearly 500 feet above the dish, is a receiver suspended on a 900-ton platform. The silvery structures emerge from thick tropical foliage and resemble some futuristic machine you might see in a Christopher Nolan film. In fact, many other creative minds have found ways to feature Arecibo in films, books and video games. 

“When I was younger I never dreamed I would get to do a project at a place like Arecibo,” says Karina. “But I worked very hard to earn the opportunity.”

The telescope did suffer some damage during Hurricane Maria.  About 30 of the reflector’s panels were broken and a 10,000-pound antenna was knocked down by the high winds. But the losses there were minimal compared to other parts of the island, and the staff and scientists were unscathed. After the disaster, Karina and her team faced challenges sourcing the parts they needed for their drone.

“It was exciting and a little scary to test our system at Arecibo,” says Karina. “We had a hard time gathering all of the parts because we were so isolated by the Hurricane. For many months we were lucky just to get essentials like food and water.”

Karina has since moved on to other projects. She is currently a research assistant at the Caribbean Tsunami Warning Program at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. She is also working on her capstone project, one of the final requirements for earning her Bachelor of Science degree. For this assignment, Karina and her team are developing a radar system to help farmers measure the amount of grain in their silos. Using a silo on campus that is part of the university’s Department of Agro-Environmental Sciences for testing, their goal is to build something inexpensive, accurate and easy to use.

For her next act, Karina plans to pursue a graduate degree in bioengineering so she can examine the relationship between electromagnetic energy and the human body. She thinks someday she may focus on designing technologies that improve the quality of life for patients suffering from neurological disorders.

“The moment I decided to become an engineer happened when I read an article about a mother with Alzheimer’s who no longer recognized her own young child,” recalls Karina. “That story broke my heart. But it also inspired me to dedicate my life to building solutions that address some of humankind’s biggest problems.”