Paola Romero

Paola is a Mechanical Engineering student at MIT who loves projects that teach her new skills — and ultimately wants to use those skills to improve people's lives. She's particularly drawn to product design and medical devices, and to engineering challenges where thoughtful design can directly improve someone's safety, comfort, or quality of life.

At the MIT Edgerton Center she serves as an Assistant Shop Manager and Student Project Lab & Makerspace Mentor, helping peers with maker projects from tool access to brainstorming solutions — teaching machine-specific training for 3D printing, laser cutting, the bandsaw, drill press, and more. She's also a Soft Robotics Undergraduate Researcher in the Fabrication-Integrated Design Lab.

Her internships span real engineering rigor: as a Research Intern at CIM UPC (Barcelona) she designed and prototyped a 6 m scale model of a 24 m post-tensioned concrete bridge in SolidWorks with FEA validation; as an Innovation Intern at Campos Engineering she assembled PCBs, built LoRaWAN IoT sensor networks, and designed 3D-printed enclosures and custom tooling. She's currently a Mechanical Engineer Intern at Lexington Medical.

Along the way she's found she loves helping others learn through their own projects — through mentorship, collaboration, and hands-on guidance — making her an ideal mentor for students building engineering, product-design, or medical-device projects.