{"id":89219,"date":"2026-07-27T09:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/?p=89219"},"modified":"2026-07-28T10:40:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:40:39","slug":"undergraduate-research-opportunities-were-transformative-for-recent-graduate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/undergraduate-research-opportunities-were-transformative-for-recent-graduate\/","title":{"rendered":"Undergraduate research opportunities were transformative for recent graduate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013  July 27, 2026 \u2013 At the University of Rhode Island, Jessica Tingley, \u201926 built a uniquely interdisciplinary profile. Pursuing dual degrees in mechanical engineering<\/a> and computer science<\/a>, with minors in mathematics and robotics<\/a>, she was able to constantly connect ideas across fields.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Tingley operates a drone outside of the Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cIt is something that has defined my research since,\u201d said Tingley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She enrolled in engineering solely because she was good at math and knew it led to stable careers. This pragmatism got her in the door, but she struggled for her first two years to find purpose. Tingley did not live on-campus. \u201cAs a commuter, a woman in the major, and a working student, I lacked a sense of belonging,\u201d said Tingley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participating in her first research project at URI was transformative for her undergraduate and post-graduation plans. She was fortunate to work with Professor Musa Jouaneh<\/a> in the Intelligent Control and Robotics Lab, which ignited her passion for robotics. \u201cThat gave me a foundation I couldn\u2019t have built in the classroom alone. I learned to approach unfamiliar technical problems systematically, to mentor others through their own transitions into research, and how to formulate important research questions,\u201d she said of her experience. \u201cEngineering, for me, became the bridge between code and the physical world. Between an idea and something that thinks, moves, and interacts with people. Once I found that, I never looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Tingley explaining her group’s automation capstone project for Hexagon at the Capstone Design Showcase.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Her biggest challenges were related to being a commuter and working up to 30 hours a week during the school year, which caused her to miss the informal, connective tissue of college life. She had to omit some student involvement opportunities from her schedule that may have helped her better navigate being in tough academic programs as one of only a handful of women in both. \u201cI found that the most meaningful support came from people: a PI who gave me room to learn by exploration, and later, mentors at Brown University and Carnegie Mellon University who took a chance on someone still finding her footing. Each of them treated me like a researcher before I fully believed I was one,\u201d said Tingley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being at a public university also meant she was surrounded by people from different walks of life, from students working full-time with families to first-generation college students. \u201cThis kept me grounded and constantly reminded me that people around me were navigating real pressures and responsibilities outside the classroom, much like I was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

“The College of Engineering gave me access to faculty who were genuinely invested in undergraduate research.”<\/blockquote>Jessica Tingley, ‘ 26<\/cite><\/div><\/section>\n\n
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Feeding a wallaby while in Melbourne, Australia for the 2025 International Conference of Automated Planning and Scheduling.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Practically speaking, URI was the financially viable option for her at the time, especially to pursue two degrees. What she found once she arrived exceeded her expectations. \u201cThe College of Engineering gave me access to faculty who were genuinely invested in undergraduate research, a robotics minor that let me formalize interests I was only still discovering, and professors who believed in me and helped me compete for prestigious opportunities,\u201d said Tingley. \u201cURI proved that opportunity isn\u2019t only found at schools with the biggest names, it\u2019s found where people believe in you and give you room to grow. I got real research access as an undergraduate with faculty who had time for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Tingley presenting her summer work at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute Showcase.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The research foundation she built made her competitive for opportunities she pursued independently, namely a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at Brown University and a summer fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. At Brown, she studied how teams of small drones can locate themselves accurately in space without expensive equipment and presented her findings at both the Brown University Symposium and the Leadership Alliance National Symposium. At Carnegie Mellon, she worked on giving robots a shared language for breaking down and coordinating complex tasks together, then presented at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute Summer Scholars Research Showcase and, later, and the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, supported by an National Science Foundation travel grant. \u201cBeing selected was a meaningful validation that the work I had built at URI could compete at that level,\u201d said Tingley.<\/p>\n\n\n

“URI proved that opportunity isn\u2019t only found at schools with the biggest names, it\u2019s found where people believe in you and give you room to grow. I got real research access as an undergraduate with faculty who had time for me.\u201d<\/blockquote><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n

In the fall, she will begin a Ph.D. in robotics at the University of Michigan, where she will be working on the Authenticity Understanding in Robotic and Human Artistic Interactions project, which explores human-robot interaction in creative contexts and studies how biometric data collected during a collaborative human-robot creative process can be used to authenticate a piece of art. \u201cEach experience expanded what I thought was possible and showed me a version of the researcher I want to become,\u201d said Tingley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013  July 27, 2026 \u2013 At the University of Rhode Island, Jessica Tingley, \u201926 built a uniquely interdisciplinary profile. Pursuing dual degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science, with minors in mathematics and robotics, she was able to constantly connect ideas across fields. \u201cIt is something that has defined my research since,\u201d said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5094,"featured_media":89220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15,17,60,18,779,96,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-profile","category-front-page-news","category-mcise","category-news","category-research-news","category-student-success","category-students"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89219"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89282,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89219\/revisions\/89282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}