Bridges, big questions, and the beach.
three pieces from my collection, choose one
I'm a civil engineering and philosophy student at UC Berkeley. On the engineering side, I'm most interested in where structures meet the Earth: foundations, coastlines, bridges, and the systems that keep cities running. Philosophy keeps me focused on the people behind every project. A seawall or a bridge changes how a whole community lives, works, and gets home at night, and I believe good engineering starts with listening to the people who will live with what we build.
My experiences have each taught me something I'll bring to my work: break a messy problem into pieces, take safety seriously, and stay calm when everyone's waiting on you.
Sitting in the center of my desk is a clear jar of sea glass. Every piece was once dismissed as broken and worthless, until the tide softened its edges and carried it to shore. I study civil engineering to understand forces like that, slow and patient, and to build things that can stand up to them.
I'm looking for summer 2027 internships in civil engineering, infrastructure, and consulting. If your work touches the water, I'd especially love to hear about it.
brienna@berkeley.eduA little bit of everything, and all of it has shaped who I am.
Valley Consulting Group
I joined a student consulting group at Berkeley, and this fall I'm learning how companies make big decisions. Most of my time goes to digging into markets for tech clients and turning a pile of research into a story a room full of executives can follow.
Cal-Cryo & Nogales Lab
I help keep a lab's cryo-electron microscopes running, which mostly means wrangling big tanks of liquid nitrogen at −196°C. It has taught me that careful, unglamorous safety work is what makes the exciting research possible.
Paradise Cove Beach Cafe
I ran the host stand at a beach cafe in Malibu, where up to 2,000 people a day showed up hoping for a table with an ocean view. A sunny Saturday there is a live puzzle in flow, timing, and patience, and I loved solving it with my team.
ASUC Senate Office
In a student senator's office, I helped international students find their way to campus support and worked on the plan for a new caucus to give them a voice in student government.
Malibu Mock Trial
Mock trial is where philosophy first clicked for me. As co-captain I helped lead our team to the best finish in school history, and I learned how to build an argument piece by piece, then stand up and defend it.
Civil engineering and philosophy at UC Berkeley: how to build things that last, and who they're for.
B.S. Civil Engineering & B.A. Philosophy
My favorite classes so far are the ones about water and ground: fluid mechanics and geotechnical engineering. Along the way I've picked up Python and MATLAB, and I design in Figma and Canva.
Pacifica is losing its coastline fast, and the city has to choose between building a seawall, managed retreat, or doing nothing. I'm building a tool that shows when a seawall stops making financial sense compared with retreat, and turns that answer into a summary a city could use in a grant application.
It adds up the cost of each option year by year through 2100 under low and high sea-level rise, finds the year when acting becomes cheaper than waiting, and checks the results against the city's own 2018 study. An early check already lines up: the erosion rates I measured at Esplanade Avenue, up to about 9 feet a year, match the city's report of 90 feet of bluff loss in a decade.
Geotechnical and fluid mechanics, and how bridges, ports and shorelines hold up against water and time.
Research, data and Python, turned into recommendations people can act on, sharpened by consulting work.
Ethics and argument from philosophy, so the things we build are fair to the communities that live with them.
When I'm not in class or at work, I'm usually somewhere near the water.
Pool laps or open ocean, I'm happy either way.
My favorite way to compete in the water.
Coastlines and golden hour.
Best played outdoors.
The harder, the better.
Competitive. Send me anagrams, I dare you.