Stella Gracia

NTU EEE Graduand Stella Gracia graduates with a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) with a Second Major in Business. She reflects on her time in NTU EEE and her opportunities in Silicon Valley.

Stella liked the EEE saying “One degree, a world of opportunities”! She like that NTU EEE offers a world of opportunities for students like herself. Starting from the many student bodies that the school has, she is thankful for the opportunity to meet many passionate people while developing her leadership and technical skills. She also did not expect herself to get so close to the EEE staff and professors the way she did. She also can’t believe that she got to travel overseas for a school trip every year. Not many students get that opportunity

She will miss the random chats, some of it over meals and late into the night, that she had with her peers, seniors, juniors, staff, and professors about how things in EEE have evolved. She loved talking about new initiatives, and sometimes hilariously passionate discussions about whether a hotdog is a sandwich. She particularly loved the overnight stay at the Hive during events, the after-hours travel during overseas school trips, and the many free buffets all around NTU or at events before COVID-19 are highly memorable too.

Stella is grateful to have had an overseas school trip every year before the pandemic hit. In her first year, she had the opportunity to go to San Francisco for the Technological Study Trip where students visited prestigious universities such as Stanford University as well as big technology companies like Google and Facebook. It was indeed an eye-opening experience! In her second year, she was part of the Leadership Immersion Programme under EEE LEAD which is a semester-long mentorship programme with Delta Electronics. Students explored different real-world problems and potential Industry 4.0 solutions. At the end of the semester, the team visited Delta HQ which is in Taiwan. Just before the pandemic, she did an internship in Silicon Valley under the Overseas Entrepreneurship Programme (OEP). OEP was a super enriching and fun experience so her advice to current and future students is to check it out. Besides overseas trips, she also had a blast organizing many events for current and prospective students and grow with the many student bodies in NTU EEE.

Academically, Stella is an ASEAN scholar who loves building things and solving problems with technology. In the past four years, she took part in and won some hackathons as well as NTU EEE in-house competitions (DIP Competition and FYP Challenge). To explore research and entrepreneurship, she also did two URECA (Undergraduate Research Experience on CAmpus) projects which titled her the President Research Scholar, and she went to the Silicon Valley for her internship under the Overseas Entrepreneurship Programme.

Beyond academics, community is something Stella holds dear. She is glad she had the chance to be part of various student bodies in her hall and school. Stella treasured all the trust given to her to hold various leadership roles and share her journey in various settings. Outside of school, she gives back to the community by volunteering as a First Aider as well as a technical mentor in youth hackathons and a technical course translator which allowed her to reach out to Indonesian youths.

Her journey in NTU EEE is not all coding and engineering. Stella took a music module (Studies in Indonesian Gamelan I) in her final semester and it was super fun! The students in the class learned how to play the Gamelan for the entire semester and having one of such modules helped her to unwind and learn more about her own culture as an Indonesian.

Most importantly, Stella is grateful to all those super friendly classmates she has gotten to know in NTU and thankful for the helpful EEE staff and professors who made the NTU EEE journey memorable.