Raul Torres, Jr. was inspired by his older brother, who worked on electronics and mechanical systems building robots. to become a Mechanical Engineering major in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
As Raul begins his final year at USC, his senior project will be to conduct, design and fabricate a 3D printed microfluidic device. The device will resemble a deformable body to create a pressure-controlled, self-adjusting cuff to resolve the issue of freely moving deformable bodies, that is often used in soft robots or cephalopods.
As a junior he undertook an investigation of cantilever beams with different materials to find a correlation between material properties and the natural frequency of the beam’s respective material. He also took part as a designer and analyst in a design project for a drone prototype using Siemens NX to conduct an investigation on focused stresses and displacements on the drone assembly.
Raul continues to help run and make deliveries for his parent’s party rental business and his brother’s photo booth company.
In the past few years, outside of academics, he has joined a community of soccer fanatics on the SC campus that play almost every weekend. He loves exploring the great city of Los Angeles where he states, “there is always something new to find.”