Orange County Branch Newsletter

November 2021

ASCE OC University Outreach

Meet the Mentors: Transportation Engineering Panel

By Matthew Quintanilla PE, MS, ENV SP | University Outreach Professional-At-Large



On October 4, 2021, ASCE OC YMF’s University Outreach hosted a Transportation Engineering panel for the third installment of its “Meet the Mentors” series. The “Meet the Mentors” series consists of discipline-specific panels to give students who participated in University Outreach’s Mentorship program a chance to broaden their perspective with additional mentors and allow students who did not participate in the program to learn from our awesome mentors.

Following the success of the Land Development and Construction Management panels, Chuck Karunathilake, Alyssa Kumnoonsate, Stephen Cruz, and Lorenzo Sevidal were selected for the Transportation Panel. For the first half of the event, Chuck Karunathilake provided a behind-the-scenes perspective of his role as one of the lead design engineers on the Port of LA SR-47 Interchange Project. The students learned about the importance of transportation design standards/considerations, scheduling, and geotechnical design issues related to the Port of LA SR-47 Interchange Project. To solidify the students’ understanding, University Outreach tested them with a follow-up Kahoot while Chuck explained the correct answers. The second half of the event was a panel moderated by Janelle Gonzalez. She fielded the students’ questions to our panelists, who provided valuable insight on their career paths, lessons learned, internship advice, and the importance of being open to different disciplines. The event was met with great feedback from our UCI, CSULB, CSUF students, and our younger members, and we are excited to continue the series throughout the upcoming academic year!


About the Author

Matthew is a Design Engineer for the City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering. He enjoys bridging the gap between students and professionals as the ASCE OC YMF University Outreach Professional at Large. Matthew can be contacted on LinkedIn.


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