🏠Home | 💼 Work Experience | 📕Projects | ✉️ Contact

I’m a mechanical engineer drawn to aerodynamics, fluid systems and flight dynamics. I’m currently a Process Controls Engineer at Reliable Controls Corporation in Salt Lake City, supporting industrial automation projects for mining, oil and gas, and manufacturing clients. Seeing a full system running on site is the part I enjoy most, and the work has sharpened my attention to detail, where one wrong tag or valve on a drawing can matter.

My interest in aerospace started in my fluids class and as propulsion lead on a boat project. Neither was easy, and that is part of why I liked them. That interest led me to my capstone, sponsored by Baxter Aerospace: a wind-tunnel force balance that was hard in the way real engineering is, because the answer was not at the back of the book. We built it to support research and left it as a tool for future Utah Tech students, which is why it is the project I value most.

Around the same time, a UAV controls and dynamics class showed me another side of flight, and I joined a research project to explore it. Our paper on aerodynamic modeling of a UAV in forward flight was accepted to the AIAA SciTech Forum 2027. Together with team projects ranging from an arcade machine to cast aluminum heat sinks, these experiences gave me hands-on practice with CAD/CAM, FEA and CFD, embedded electronics and fabrication, and I want to keep building those skills in aerodynamics, thermal and fluid systems, and flight dynamics and controls.

Beyond engineering, I’m originally from Colombia and bring an international perspective and a strong drive to learn, collaborate, and innovate. I also play soccer and go to the gym, a habit I carried over from my time as a student athlete.

© Jose Alvarez 2026. All content on this site is original and owned by the author unless otherwise noted