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Meet Fakhirah Khairuddin, an alumna of MARA Junior Science College (MRSM) who went to study at a prestigious university in the US before landing a job at Tesla
Image via Sinar Harian
Recently, Fakhirah’s success was celebrated by netizens after her journey was made known to the public on Facebook
In a post published on 6 August, netizen Dr Zulkifli Hussain highlighted her success, sharing that Fakhirah has a humble beginning at MRSM Ulul Albab, located in Kota Putra, Terengganu.
Upon her graduation, it is learnt that she received a scholarship from Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) to study at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
She completed her Bachelor’s Degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering before getting another scholarship from the university to pursue a Master’s Degree.
Dr Zulkifli’s post eventually garnered MARA’s attention. The government agency lauded and congratulated Fakhirah for her achievements.
She is now living in Fremont, California, and working as a technical training robotics engineering instructor at Tesla
According to tech enthusiast Richard Ker — who is also the vice president at Aerodyne Group in Malaysia — Fakhirah is said to have extensive technical experience that helped her land a job at the electronic car company, voted as the most attractive employer for US engineering students.
Here are some of Fakhirah’s credentials as shared by Ker:
– She worked as a Propulsion Development Engineer at the University of California, where she wrote Matlab codes to study heat conduction of a rocket engine.
– She won first place in the Northrop Grumman System Engineering Challenge 2019, competing with 50 other teams; her winning project was a robotic arm that she designed and programmed.
– She was a team lead and spearheaded the research and development of a Hexacopter Project with UCSD.
– She designed a quadcopter, sensor casing, and landing gear on Solidworks; demonstrated new concepts through 3D print testing, and improved the designs through iterations.
Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California.
Image via Electrek
At the time of writing, Ker’s post highlighting Fakhirah’s journey has garnered over 12,000 shares and 16,000 likes
In a comment, Fakhirah thanked Ker for featuring her success in a post.
“Hi, Richard Ker. It is an absolute honor to be featured in your post. I appreciate you for going above and beyond,” she wrote.
Image via Facebook
Thousands of netizens also congratulated Fakhirah for landing a job at Tesla.
“Congrats! Great talent [from] Malaysia and represents all women of Malaysia. Keep it up gurl!” a netizen cheered.
“Congrats. More STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) talents, please. Let them cultivate their skills… (studying and working) abroad if necessary. Our local industry isn’t quite ready for talents like her, but hopefully, in [the] future, we will be,” read a top comment.
“Congratulations, Ms Fakhirah Khairuddin… You are an inspiration to young [Malaysians] alike. Hope more young male Malaysians have the same drive,” said a Facebook user.
Image via Facebook