A West Boca High Grad Succeeds at Ohio State

We received a wonderful press release from Ohio State about West Boca High graduate Samuel Yacinthe:
West Boca Native Re-engineers Chevrolet Camaro
Samuel Yacinthe, a graduate of West Boca Raton Community High School, is helping to redesign and re-engineer a Chevrolet Camaro as part of the Ohio State EcoCAR 3 team.
EcoCAR 3 is a four-year advanced vehicle technology competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. Students from 16 universities across North America are challenged to redesign and re-engineer a Chevrolet Camaro to make it more fuel efficient and better for the environment, while still maintaining safety, performance and consumer acceptability.
Yacinthe serves as the Systems Engineering Lead for the Ohio State EcoCAR 3 team. In his role, he is responsible for design, control, and integration of vehicle systems. He had a large impact on the vehicle architecture selection process, since he helped develop models of the entire system, so the team could predict the behavior of the system for different design inputs.
“My position on the Ohio State EcoCAR 3 team during year one is extremely important,” Yacinthe said. “Since we currently don’t have a physical vehicle, we need to run simulations on computers to test our ideas for achieving design goals.”

So, what really sparked Yacinthe’s interest in automotive engineering? He instantly thought back to his first Lego set and how he enjoyed finding solutions to complex problems. But, in high school Yacinthe had an opportunity to experience engineering and design on a whole new level.
“At my school, I was on the drafting and design track,” Yacinthe said. “This meant that I took one class a year dedicated to those topics. In an early course, I was introduced to computer-aided design tools. By the end of the track, I was able to draft an entire house.”
He specifically mentioned math teacher Stacey Jacobowitz: “I don’t think I ever told her, but she was one of my most favorite teachers throughout high school. Though math can be challenging, she made it fun and easy to understand.”
Yacinthe is still considering where he hopes to be in the next few years. This summer he will be interning with the Ford Motor Company within their Research & Advanced Engineering group.
“I believe that many of the opportunities I have now are a product of a great foundational education and hometown,” Yacinthe said. “Whether I go on to become a Professor in engineering or to work at an automotive company, the skills I have learned from Boca Raton will stay with me forever.”
Yacinthe grew up in the Palmetto Pines community south of Palmetto Park Road and west of 441.
Read more about the project: Ohio State’s EcoCAR team