Part of Schwartz’s confidence to pursue his goals comes from the encouragement of MIT professors and staff, starting with Abeyaratne from 2.001. After graduating, he will study physics with extended research at Imperial College London as a 2018 Marshall Scholar. The experience left Schwartz with a strong sense of determination: “I know that to be as effective as possible in terms of getting fusion to the top of the list for renewables and replacing fossil fuels, I need to have a technical background.” Next semester, Schwartz will perform thesis research at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. “Also, everybody at the company cared so much about the outcome of what could do. “I got to experience a lot of really complicated technical challenges there,” Schwartz says. Schwartz worked as a mechanical design intern at the company the summer before his senior year. One of those companies responded: Tri Alpha Energy. To get started with research, Schwartz reached out to nuclear fusion companies and asked to work with them. But, if this system is as successful as I think it can be, then the 2 million people in India or the 40,000 in the United Kingdom who could die each year because of air pollution won’t have to anymore.” “Not many people think of this massive nuclear fusion reactor as doing that. “The kind of engineering that I want to do is the kind that can change people’s lives for the better,” Schwartz says. With nuclear fusion research, Schwartz is pursuing his ideal kind of engineering. The process requires extremely high temperatures and careful control: An example of where fusion currently occurs is the sun. Unlike nuclear fission, which involves splitting a uranium-235 atom to generate traditional nuclear power, fusion involves the combination of two atoms, which has the potential to generate much more energy than fission. “I truly believe that it has the ability to flip the energy industry on its head completely,” he says. Though Schwartz enjoyed participating in the team, he began to think even more broadly and wondered, “What is something unbelievably attractive in terms of engineering and has the possibility to change the world if it’s successful?” In January 2017, the team won the Safety and Reliability Award and placed third overall. “I was one of the two or three undergraduates on this team, and, because I was surrounded by insanely smart graduate students, I was able to learn so much about the theoretical aspects of design as well as machining, and how to combine those two,” Schwartz says. Schwartz also worked on the MIT Hyperloop Team during his sophomore and junior years, to help design a concept pod for the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. During his sophomore year, Schwartz worked on prosthetic devices in the MIT D-Lab and field-tested in Kenya and Ethiopia a pediatric transtibial prosthetic liner he designed. “What I love about mechanical engineering is that you create things that you can hold and build yourself, if you have the tools to do so.”Īs his studies have progressed, he has focused on two specific areas: engineering for the developing world, and nuclear fusion. “It was fascinating because we were learning these very complicated theories, and then every single class we were applying them to real problems,” Schwartz says. When Schwartz first arrived at the Institute, he wasn’t committed to engineering until he took 2.001 (Mechanics and Materials I), with Rohan Abeyaratne, the Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanics, during his freshman spring semester. Schwartz tends to make a lot of people smile with his work - both inside and outside of MIT. “It makes a lot of people smile,” he says proudly of his annual tradition, which is funded by the MIT SHASS-based de Florez Fund for Humor. For his senior year, Schwartz aimed for something “bigger than ever.” He and his elves - his friends and classmates who also join in on the holiday costume-wearing - handed out thousands of pieces of candy while Christmas music played in the background. “I came up with my sophomore year and thought it would be really fun,” Schwartz says. Nick Schwartz likes to describe himself as “a nerd with a heart.” Before finals period at the end of each fall semester, the mechanical engineering senior and nuclear fusion enthusiast dons a Santa Claus costume and hands out candy to students, staff, and faculty passing through the lobby of Building 7.
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