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Meet Phuong Truong: alumna, lecturer, adjunct faculty, education specialist, and mom

June 30, 2025-- Phuong Truong has done it all at Â鶹´«Ã½: from an undergraduate student in structural engineering, to master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering and now an adjunct lecturer and education specialist, Truong has been a strong presence at the Jacobs School of Engineering for more than a decade. In that time, she has started several hands-on student organizations, helped craft award-winning curriculum, launched outreach programs for community college and high school students, and led impactful research projects. 

Though Truong has now embarked on a new role- providing her own children the type of environment she has been creating for students for so long- she is still actively guiding and mentoring the next generation of engineers through several teaching and outreach roles.

Learn more about the many ways Truong has impacted past, current and future students at the Jacobs School and beyond in this Q&A.

Phuong Truong, center, with interns from the DERConnect Outreach program she runs. Left to right: Tahseeh Hussain, Mariela Cueto, Nikita Valajev, Tony Sanchez, Stephen Hidalgo, Tsion-Aduesa Smart, Belma Bajramovic, Phuong Truong, Antoine Bonhomme, Marc Olsher, Phuong Nguyen, Oren Balmir-Cloven, and Jeff Smit.

Q: What did you study at Â鶹´«Ã½ and why?

I completed my undergraduate degree in Structural Engineering (2016), Master’s in Mechanical Engineering (2018), Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Medical Devices (2023). During my undergrad, I was not accepted into the impacted bioengineering major, where my true passion was in biology and cancer research. Structural Engineering and Chemical Engineering were the only non-impacted majors in 2010—it was a coin toss decision to pursue structural engineering. I know this doesn’t sound very deliberate, but in retrospect, structural engineering gave me the materials analysis skills and structural analysis background that was instrumental to conducting medical device research and to design with consideration to material behavior. It was an unconventional and non-traditional pathway, but I found my way back into more bio-related research via medical devices despite starting in structural engineering and could not be more grateful.

Q: Why did you choose to study engineering? 

I was the first in my family to pursue engineering. In high school, I was inspired by the PBS Nova ScienceNow episode on Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, where she studied regeneration of liver cells using light. The idea that an engineer can create, build, and solve problems using technologies was incredibly fascinating and left an impression on me. I didn’t know if I would succeed, but in retrospect, now that my two younger brothers are pursuing engineering, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Q: What type of research projects did you work on as a graduate student?

I was interested in medical devices research and had the opportunity to work on two major projects: The first was an implantable that helps patients with glaucoma monitor and track their eye pressure to prevent irreversible blindness. This work was conducted under Professor Frank Talke.

In the second project, I worked on an intraoral measurement system for measuring infant sucking vacuum to . This work was conducted under Professor James Friend and Erin Walsh and is currently a startup! I couldn’t be more excited for the next direction of this project. 

Q: You have started and run several outreach programs during your tenure as a student and beyond – why is this work important to you, and can you share about a few of these programs?

I set out to make education accessible for students. This was done through student organizations at first, and eventually evolved into courses and programs that impacted our San Diego region. 

Before Envision Studios, our Jacobs School didn’t have as much experiential learning available. In response, I started (they are no longer around) with a mission to give students a community and place to build projects. This was before hands-on learning took off with the makerspaces, so everything we did was organic, student-driven, and had a great impact on our student community. 

In 2016, I started with Professor Truong Nguyen with a mission to make hands-on engineering education accessible for all students, driving the change needed to bring hands-on education to ECE. This work led to the development of a new course called to inject the Project in a Box projects and framework and allow students to channel their creativity and build projects in a course environment. Project in a Box continues to offer workshops and projects for students to gain hands-on experiences, and some of those projects are still used in the award-winning electrical and computer engineering curriculum today. Particularly, the flagship that brings our alumni, their kids, and our engineering students together still runs to this day, and I couldn’t be more proud of the . 

Working with Professor Truong Nguyen, we created the inaugural for ECE at the start of COVID in 2020. This was to help students prepare for transferring to UCSD in ECE and engage students from all over without geographical barriers. 

The work is my latest work (2025) and combines all of my experiences running student orgs, teaching courses, engineering, to impact the community in the space of distributed energy resources and microgrids.

Making education accessible, digestible, and having an impact on student career trajectories is still at the heart of all I do. That’s my way of creating new generations of engineers.

All of this work with an emphasis on accessibility is important because underserved communities, first generation families, underrepresented groups, do not experience innovation the way you think. People are afraid of risk and what they don’t know. I think technology and innovation has a long way to go in terms of uplifting and penetrating these communities. For example, solar panels are a big investment for a family that lives paycheck to paycheck, even though the electricity bill causes a lot of financial stress. The best way to help serve our communities is to empower and facilitate students from these communities to become engineers.

Q: What is your role now? What do you enjoy about it?

My role most days is being a mom! I actually stay home with my kids (3-year-old and 5-year-old) most of the week and try to provide the same environment I provide for my students: a place that focuses on curiosity, learning, and work ethic. 

Despite being home with my kids, I stay active in teaching. I am also currently an adjunct engineering faculty at Mesa College. This past year I taught ENGE 101 and I run for students through the Innovation Research Lab funded by the Department of Education’s HSI Grant. This work allows me to extend my experiences to our future transfer students and incorporate experiential learning into our community college district. I am also the Work Based Liaison for the School of Math and Natural Sciences this semester, where I help drive data analytics and faculty engagement with work-based learning in the community. 

I’m currently the Education Specialist for , and I get to do what I do best in this role. It just so happens that the topic is on sustainability, renewable energy, and microgrids this time. Through the NSF-funded DERConnect work, we are able to create meaningful outreach and support our next generation of engineers as we train them in workshops, programs, and classes. 

I also teach for the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Â鶹´«Ã½. During summers, I enjoy teaching in small classrooms and get to know my students one on one. I love teaching MAE 150 (computational methods for design) and MAE 8 (intro to MATLAB programming). I bring the same energy and active learning environments into my classroom. Students get hands-on experiences with projects and despite it being the summer (5 week sessions), they achieve a final journal formatted paper on their finite element analysis or computational results. 

Q: What advice do you have for students interested in pursuing engineering?

Work ethic is your biggest asset and something you control. Not your circumstances, not your intelligence, not where you started. Many students give up through self-elimination, and it breaks my heart to hear. A part of the normal struggle for underrepresented students will be under-preparation, knowledge gaps, family, imposter syndrome, unfortunate events, financial circumstances, and it’s so easy to feel like these are the reasons you can’t do it. But no matter your origin story, I want every student to know that your work ethic will help you achieve your dreams. It has proven true with any self-made billionaire you can think of, and across the thousands of students I’ve worked with.

Q: What do you enjoy about this work?

I’ve enjoyed all that work that I do because I know that the engineers we train now are fundamental to the next generation of technologies and innovations that would help us solve the most pressing problems of our time. And for those innovations to address equity, accessibility, and impact all communities---not just those that can afford it. We go farther together if only all of us can have access to the same resources to be productive, informed, and look beyond our day-to-day stresses. With every student that I teach, mentor, coach, and impact, I know we are closer to making that future possible. As I always say, “we can only solve problems we understand,” this is why diversity and representation is so important in engineering. 

Q: What’s next?

We’re at a pivotal moment at the Jacobs School of Engineering. The pieces are all coming together—hands-on learning, makerspaces, experiential courses embedded in the curriculum, and a growing community of innovative teaching faculty. It’s the ideal time to launch an educational center built on the that describes engineering education as a process of transferring students’ skills, knowledge, and experiences toward real-world, socially beneficial outcomes. I believe this center has the potential to transform how we teach engineering—making our classrooms more impactful, more inclusive, and a model for the future of engineering education. It’s my hope that this center would become a reality over the next decade. I’m hoping with all of the work that I’ve done, we can leverage these experiences to continue to elevate education at our Jacobs School while also serving our San Diego community.

 

Media Contacts

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Katherine Connor
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-8374
khconnor@ucsd.edu