Santiago Arconada Alvarez
​Engineer turned designer.
About
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Georgia Tech 2019 PC: Ngoc Tran
Hello!
My name is Santiago, although most of my friends and family know me as Yago. I come from a little city in the north of Spain called Burgos, where the food is amazing and the cold keeps you young. I left to California 8 long years ago with a small suitcase and dreams of changing the world.
I am a someone who looks at a company's mission before looking at what job openings I qualify for. My expertise lies in my ability to wear many hats and learn fast. Previously a Project Leader in Mechanical Engineering, and now managing a healthcare innovation team at Emory University. My current professional work revolves around researching and building public-facing web tools and mobile apps to improve the patient experience. I have also burning interests on neuroscience and using Wearables and Virtual Reality for learning.
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Finding your place can take a bit of effort. I started my formal research career at the Salk Institute volunteering in a Plant Biology lab, there I learnt a ton on DNA collection techniques and PCR, also boosted my French to fluent levels (shoutout for Dr. Bourbousse for being the best mentor). After about a year I started working in a NanoEngineering lab (well that was my major so I felt it was about time to dive in) and learnt to synthesize nano molecules and do bio imaging for cancer diagnosis. These two experiences made me realize that sample preparation takes a TON of your time. So after almost developing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, I decided it was enough for now and got an engineering job. Woohoo! IKA was kind enough to give me a chance so started work there as an intern and quickly moved up to a full-time position (and bought myself a new bicycle with my first paycheck). The work there was great, we built electrochemistry instruments for top-notch organic chemists at Scripps and the work environment was very friendly. I realized there that the atmosphere in the office is almost as crucial as its ability to produce results, and I learnt that I’m actually really good at boosting team morale and intuitively creating that kind of atmosphere around me. In spite of this direct staircase into adulthood I still had an itch. My curious side wouldn’t give up and still thought about all those neuroscience classes I took during undergrad so I decided to go back to school and meet people with whom I could immerse myself in these impossible challenges. Still swimming in there right now...

Education
University of California, San Diego | Department of NanoEngineering
Bachelors of Science, NanoEngineering | BioEngineering Conc.
Minor in Psychology
​Sep 2012 - June 2016         GPA: 3.61
Georgia Institute of Technology | College of Computing
​Master of Science, Human-Computer Interaction | Interactive Computing
Aug 2019 - May 2021           GPA: 4.0

Languages

Fluent in Spanish, English, and French.
Basic German (for survival only!)

Neuroscience Experiments

As part of my research interests, I design pilot experiments on different topics of neuroscience and learning. If you have ever run user studies you'll understand the hurdles on finding participants, and will concur that sometimes you have to come up with fancy ways, like putting them on your portfolio website.
Click here to participate on a pilot language study!