Hyundai/Kia America Technical Center
Since graduating from the Ferris AET program in 2010, I’ve been working for Hyundai/Kia America Technical Center (HATCI). I work in the powertrain department, currently in the Performance Test Team, and have had many different roles and responsibilities in the past three years I started working with the vehicle validation group, where I coordinated new powertrain durability testing, performed specialized testing within the overall scope of each project, and controlled the budgets assigned to those particular projects. About nine months into that role, I was given the opportunity to transition into competitive benchmarking. Since then I have been performing competitive benchmarking by reverse engineering competitive vehicles, performing testing of fuel economy, performance, and driveability, and comparing the results to new Hyundai/Kia prototypes. Benchmarking is a good way to determine what calibration and hardware strategies the competition is using, and from that have come some innovative ideas that are new to our company. I’ve been able to work very closely with some of the best engineers in the industry to develop these ideas into reality. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to work with such a great and knowledgeable group, and learn something new every day.