Lab manager Jeffrey Vargas and Akshay Potnuru, senior lecturer, oversee a lab for AME 341. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)
On a Tuesday afternoon in Biegler Hall, the third-floor instructional lab hums with activity. Students crowd around benchtop setups, adjusting power supplies and checking multimeter readings. Others huddle over a wind tunnel experiment, measuring velocity profiles and lift coefficients. In one corner, a group carefully dunks a metal wire into hot water and watches it snap back to its original shape — a demonstration of shape memory alloy, one of the specialized experiments that sets USC’s Mechoptronics course apart.
This is AME 341, the junior-level course that has become a rite of passage for aerospace and mechanical engineering students at USC Viterbi. The course — which faculty call a marquee class that students carry with them for life — demands consistency, curiosity, and a willingness to troubleshoot through ambiguity. At any given time, around 190 students are enrolled across multiple lab sections, supported by a staff of 20 instructors, TAs, and graders. Overseeing the daily operations is Jeffrey Vargas, the lab manager who keeps the course running smoothly. “To be successful with Mechoptronics, a student needs to be not afraid to make mistakes,” Vargas says. “The labs are designed so that you can make mistakes without burning the place down. Make the mistakes here, learn here. We’re not going to be there when you go into industry.”
Today, Akshay Potnuru, senior lecturer of aerospace and mechanical engineering, is overseeing the shape memory alloy experiment — a hands-on demonstration of how materials science meets engineering application. Students test the nickel-titanium wire that can lift 1,000 times its own weight, and Potnuru is there to connect the physics to real-world projects: NASA tires, space exploration robots, humanoid faces with micro-expressions. It’s the kind of learning that doesn’t happen in lecture halls. Students here don’t just memorize theory. They troubleshoot, they build, and they figure out what works by doing it themselves.
Malithi Sella Kapu. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)
Malithi Sella Kapu
Malithi Sella Kapu is a junior studying mechanical engineering, and she’s in the middle of Mechoptronics B right now. She took A in the fall. She’s also been working in the lab since she was a freshman — first as a volunteer, then as a paid student worker once a position opened up. Today she’s working alongside Daniel, assembling components on a circuit board for a new experiment.
Vargas remembers her as someone who was consistent from day one. “She came in here and said, ‘I want to learn that. I want to learn that. I want to learn that,'” he recalls. “Everything we had in here, she was absorbing.” Solicapu reached out to seniors and graduate students, asked them how to learn more, dove into whatever technical work was available. She’s gotten so comfortable in the lab that she’s started adding her own touch — literally. She puts art on PCBs, designs, anything she can. “I think art’s cool,” she says. “So I wanted to add my touch to it.” Vargas says it’s a sign of how far she’s come. “She’s gotten so comfortable that she can not only work on technical stuff but also introduce a part of herself.”
As for Mechoptronics itself? “It was a pain,” Sella Kapu says, laughing. “But it was useful. You do learn.” The class teaches troubleshooting, she explains — learning to explore on your own, not always relying on a TA or professor to tell you how to do something. “You just kind of have to try and troubleshoot on your own. That’s pretty useful.” The reports forced her to understand theory she’d never even heard of before. And the equipment — power supplies, multimeters, oscilloscopes, waveform generators — became second nature. “They’re all really important for characterizing systems or troubleshooting things. You kind of need to have that understanding to build stuff on your own.”
Sella Kapu’s long-term plan is to get some industry experience, figure out what companies are working on, and then eventually do her own thing — build weird gadgets for fun, maybe start something. She likes making things that could be for superheroes or villains, she says. Cool technology that doesn’t have to hurt people, just exists because it’s interesting. “I just feel more fulfilled building stuff for myself,” she says. “Whether there’s a market or not, I kind of just want to have fun in life.”
Daniel Lucio Ayullo. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)
Daniel Tjan
Daniel Tjan is a freshman — second semester — and he’s already a fixture in the lab. He won’t take Mechoptronics until junior year, which gives him a couple of years to “prepare mentally,” as he puts it. From what he’s heard, it’s challenging. But it also sounds interesting, and there are a lot of projects going on.
Today, he and Malithi are assembling components on a circuit board for the same PID control experiment Katherine is working on. When asked what they’re building, Daniel grins and admits he’s just taking instructions, screwing things in, making an assembly line. But that’s how you learn — by doing, even when you don’t fully understand the theory yet.
Tjan didn’t wait for an invitation to get involved in the lab. After his first semester at USC, he reached out to Vargas and asked if he could work there. Vargas didn’t have an open position at the time, but he saw something in Tjan — a student who hit the floor running. “There are a few students who are outspoken and just want to learn more, want to do more,” Vargas says. “Daniel was definitely one of those students.” So Tjan started working in the lab this semester, assembling equipment, learning the tools, getting a head start on skills he’ll need down the line.
Right now, Tjan is in the thick of his core curriculum — calc three, physics, MATLAB, the basics. But last semester he took AME 101, the introduction to mechanical engineering course, where students build bridges, design tanks, and compete in the King of the Hill contest. That hands-on project work is what got him hooked. He’s still figuring out exactly where his interests lie, but he knows he wants to keep building. And he knows he wants to be ready when Mechoptronics comes around.
Catherine Garcia Lopes. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)
Katherine Garcia Lopez
Katherine Garcia Lopez is a sophomore studying mechanical engineering, and she hasn’t taken Mechoptronics yet. She will, next year in the fall. But she’s already in the lab, working as a student helper, prepping equipment for the course. Today she’s soldering capacitors onto DC motors for a new PID control experiment that Vargas is introducing to the curriculum.
“I heard that you learn a lot from it,” Garcia Lopez says about the course. “It’s challenging, but overall it’s a really good experience.” She’s talked to Malithi, one of the junior student workers who’s currently taking Mechoptronics B. The feedback has been consistent: it’s hard, but it’s worth it.
Garcia Lopez likes working with her hands. Growing up, she and her dad would take apart Hot Wheels cars and mess around with the parts. She and her brothers built a lot of Legos. “I like assembling things, putting things together, seeing them work in the end,” she says. “It’s a really fulfilling experience.” That hands-on sensibility is what drew her to mechanical engineering in the first place, and it’s why she’s spending time in the lab even before she has to. She’s thinking about focusing on materials or mechanics, maybe working with material composition or product design. For now, she’s content to keep building, keep learning. “As long as I’m contributing to something, I feel like it’s good in the long run,” she says.
Luca Sacchetto. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)
Luca Sacchetto
Luca Sacchetto is an undergraduate mechanical engineering student taking the graduate-level Mechoptronics course, AME 504. He grew up in the Bay Area, surrounded by technology and the newest gadgets, and that’s what got him into engineering in the first place. Today he and Bradley are working on a dissection project — taking apart an old digital camera that records onto mini DV tapes and analyzing every electrical and mechanical component inside it. They’re carefully assembling the electrical components around the cassette mechanism, examining how each piece fits together.
“The whole point is we break apart the electrical components, the mechanical components, and look at all the different microcontrollers and aspects of the system that make the device work,” Sacchetto says. It’s one of two big projects in the course. The other is a final project where students build their own robot, pretty much whatever they want, with only loose constraints. “You propose the project, and the teacher might say, ‘Maybe make it a little more difficult, add a few more things,’ but overall it’s very up to us what we want to do.”
Sacchetto’s background is mechanical, so he’s learning a lot about electronics and microcontrollers — the parts of technology he didn’t get much exposure to in his previous classes. “In mechanical classes, you don’t really learn too much about the electronics of stuff,” he says. “But this class doesn’t go too in detail in the lectures. You learn the concepts, more broad, and then with the labs and projects, you go more in depth and adapt yourself.”
His dream job is working in robotics, probably at a smaller company or a startup, building something from the ground up. Making something new. He’s always liked taking things apart and rebuilding them, and that’s what this class lets him do at scale. “It’s very project-oriented,” he says. “That’s what I like about it.”
Bradley Miller. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)
Bradley Miller
Bradley Miller is an electrical engineering student doing a progressive degree — taking graduate-level courses as an undergrad. He’s in the same AME 504 Mechoptronics class as Sacchetto, working on the same dissection project. Together they’re assembling electrical components around the cassette mechanism of the old digital camera, examining how the technology works from the inside out.
As an electrical engineer, Miller already has experience with oscilloscopes, multimeters, and measurement tools. But this class is giving him something different: a deep dive into the mechanical side and the physical phenomena that make systems work. “It’s not just how they work, but the actual physical phenomena that make them work,” Miller says. “And with that, you can learn a little bit more about how to use them more effectively — how to not waste power, for example, or what type of motor might be best for a certain job.” Right now, the class is covering electrical actuators, breaking down the physics and operating principles of motors that power everything from electric cars to the little cassette spinner in the camera they’re dissecting.
Miller’s career goal is to work as a robotics engineer or hardware engineer, putting together PCBs and robotic systems. This course is teaching him exactly what he needs for that work. “It’s really giving us the tools to build mechatronic systems,” he says. “Which is super exciting.”
The class structure is hands-on and project-driven. There are weekly labs where students work with Arduino microcontrollers — small programmable boards that control motors, sensors, and other components. There are the two major projects — the dissection and the final robot build. And through it all, students are learning to work independently, figuring things out as they go. For Miller, that’s the point. You learn by doing, by troubleshooting, by building something and watching it work. Or watching it fail, and then figuring out why.
Joe Rees. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)
Joe Rees
Joe Rees took Mechoptronics two years ago as an undergraduate and is back now as a master’s student and TA, working alongside the students in the lab. For him, the class was challenging in exactly the right way. “It gives you a really broad span of engineering topics,” he says. “You’re using all different tools — electronics, oscilloscopes, multimeters, wiring setups, coding languages. It gives you really strong fundamentals.”
At the time, Rees didn’t fully connect how useful those skills would be. Looking back now as a master’s student in aerospace engineering, he sees it clearly. His career goal is to work in testing and hardware engineering, hands-on work in the aerospace industry. “A lot of the things we did during that class — using oscilloscopes, wiring setups — that’s exactly what I want to do,” he says. “Being able to learn all those things really prepares you well.”
What sets Mechoptronics apart, Rees explains, is that it doesn’t just teach tools. It teaches students how to set up experiments, collect data, analyze it, and connect the concepts to real applications. “You’re not only learning how to use the equipment,” he says. “You’re connecting the theory to what you’re actually seeing in the lab. When you’re first learning it, it can feel overwhelming because you bounce around a lot. But then as you do your experiments, it starts to connect. And then you’re like, okay, this makes it more concrete.”
Rees enjoyed the course enough that he came back to TA for it — and for the senior design class in the fall. He even spent the summer before that learning how to use the lab’s manufacturing equipment, just so he’d be ready. Vargas calls him a student who’s always willing to learn. Rees says it’s because the work is fun. “I like being able to visually connect an experimental setup to the theory,” he says. “I like using my hands, being on my feet — not just sitting there writing code.”
Published on March 10th, 2026
Last updated on March 17th, 2026