Virginia Covert
Virginia is a fourth-year engineering student passionate about the environment, sustainability, and food systems. Virginia has worked on projects involving food engineering, high-throughput phenotyping, performant programming, and plant breeding. Through her work with controlled environment agriculture, Virginia has learned about industry standards for hydroponic farming as well as methods for environmental monitoring through IoT enabled sensors. This work involved programming microcontrollers to monitor and wirelessly report air and water quality data. At the same time, she worked with a hyperspectral camera to build a visual-spatial model of lettuce. This work will inform closed system agriculture for space travel.
While studying at Kyoto University in Japan, Virginia learned about engineering across cultures to create a more accessible product and bring the world together. She also learned about performant
programming and process optimization during her time abroad. Her experience with the UF Blueberry Breeding Lab taught her about plant breeding and the process of genomic informed
selection. She also learned about leading edge research into parthenocarpy of blueberry cultivars.
During her studies at the University of Florida, Virginia has maintained Dean’s List status. Virginia’s passion for sustainability and agriculture are expressed in her love of gardening and
composting. In Spring of 2023, she worked on a team to develop a small-scale, postharvest hydrocooling system for strawberries. The previous Fall, she spent time growing fruits and vegetables to donate to the Field and Fork Pantry for UF students and faculty.
Korynn Haetten
Korynn Haetten is a senior mechanical engineering student at the University of Florida. She has earned consistent recognition on the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Dean’s List and is a Northrop Grumman Scholarship recipient.
Korynn is currently a member of the Swamp Launch Rocket Team , where she serves on the Structures Sub Team. This will be her 3rd year on the team with experience on the Payload-Mechanical, Structures, and Testing Sub Teams. During her time on the team, she has helped design, analyze, test, and manufacture various components of the rockets.
This past summer, Korynn had the opportunity to intern as a Stress Engineer Intern at Spirit AeroSystems. She was a contributing member of the Boeing 777-8F Section 41 Frames team and was able to perform stress analysis for two sills. This internship solidified her passion to contribute to the field of aerospace/defense engineering.
Korynn has also collaborated with a team of engineers to design and manufacture a remote-controlled robot during her time as a Design & Manufacturing Lab Design Team Member. This experience included producing 3D CAD models and drawings, writing four thorough design reports, and manufacturing designed parts using manual machining (lathe, mill) and a CNC machine. The team earned 7th place out of 40+ teams.
Korynn is very excited to be a part of the UF Food Science and Human Nutrition Food Desiccator project this year during IPPD! She is eager to learn more about psychrometry and further develop her design, analysis, testing and teamwork skills.
Stanley Moonjeli
Stanley Moonjeli is a senior Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Florida Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. He expects to graduate in May 2024 and then will begin pursuing a Master’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering with an expected graduation date of May 2025, also at the University of Florida. He plans to focus his graduate studies on navigation systems and will specialize in the dynamics and control of aerospace vehicles.
This past summer, Stanley completed a systems engineering internship at Honeywell Aerospace as part of the Military Aircraft Systems Engineering Team. In this role, Stanley had the opportunity to work on the Embedded GPS/Inertial Navigation Systems (EGI) product line. He completed simulation testing and conducted MATLAB data analyses to verify military performance requirements in collaboration with hardware engineering teams. The internship provided Stanley with the opportunity to learn about modern navigation systems, inertial sensor units, and different methods of both software and hardware testing. Stanley is continuing to work part-time for Honeywell Aerospace during the 2023-2024 academic year and will return as a full-time Master’s System Engineering Intern for the summer of 2024.
Stanley loves watching football and is a huge Pittsburgh Steelers and Florida Gators fan. In his free time, he enjoys spending time outdoors, going to the gym, and is working towards earning his skydiving certification.
Alex Weaver
Alex Weaver is a 4th-year Chemical Engineering student at the University of Florida. He will graduate in Spring 2024 from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. Within the Department of Material Science and Engineering, Alex collaborates with the College of Agriculture and Life Science’s Department of Entomology under Drs. Chris Batich and Rebecca Baldwin to develop an artificial blood meal for raising Ae. aegypti (yellow fever mosquito). He has gained proficiency in several analytical techniques, including lyophilization, scanning electron microscopy, centrifugation, and vacuum filtration. His work on artificial meals for mosquitoes has resulted in an oral presentation at an international conference and the filing of a
provisional patent application.
Between the spring and fall semesters, Alex has participated in internships at Merck & Co., a multinational pharmaceutical company. He worked within their Vaccine Manufacturing Facility under process engineers his first summer, gaining insight into sterile processing and current Good Manufacturing/Documentation Practice while drafting and executing vial reinspection and filter testing protocols. In 2023, he returned to Merck within their Vaccine Process Development department to study the effects of a chemical compound on cell culture for a pipeline vaccine product. Alex worked with experts in cell culture and process analytical scientists, training in aseptic technique and both static and bioreactor cell culture and leveraging Designs of Experiments (DoEs) to formulate a large-scale experiment.
Alex enjoys an active lifestyle in his free time, participating in biking, swimming, running, and weightlifting. He also plays a few musical instruments and can often be found with a guitar in hand.