My name is Jacob Chiu and I am a student at Henry M. Gunn High School, class of 2026 in Palo Alto, California. I enjoy doing engineering-related projects and want to study mechanical engineering one day. Some of my projects include an electric go-kart with a speedometer and a custom alarm clock. I also own a 3D printer and can attest that it is ideal for producing complex, small plastic parts. 3D printers are not: (a) a magical technology that will be used to fabricate everything in the near future, nor (b) useless pieces of crap used to print nothing but trinkets.

I am also interested in antiques and have refurbished multiple typewriters. The fact that these 80-something-year-old machines can be refurbished to the day they were new, yet most mobile phones stop getting software support at four years and have non-replaceable batteries that deteriorate to the point of near uselessness after five. In that vein, I also have a Canon FTb SLR camera and occasionally take photos on photographic film, which “sees” light more like the human eye does and has none of the lighting issues of digital cameras. The camera hails from an age when good photos required a camera that was actually good and an able photographer, unlike modern cameras which attempt to fix everything up artificially with image processing and digital gizmos like that, but it doesn’t achieve the same effect.

You can find a copy of my academic transcript here and my résumé here.