Full Profile
David Angelo
Engineering Science student focused on rigorous analysis for real-world medical and biomechanical challenges.
Cultivating a Pathway into Clinical Practice
For most of my life I was focused on competitive swimming, where improvement meant refining my own technique and pushing for better times. When I later transitioned into lifeguarding and teaching first aid, my perspective shifted. Instead of focusing on individual performance, I became responsible for the safety of hundreds of people at once. That environment forced me to think in systems. Prevention, situational awareness, and quick decision making mattered more than perfection.
That experience pushed me toward Engineering Science. I wanted to understand the technical side of the environments I worked in and learn how rigorous analysis could support real decisions in high pressure situations. The same focus I developed through music and sport translated naturally. Practicing bass guitar taught me discipline and rhythm, while lifeguarding demanded calm execution under pressure. Engineering gave me the tools to approach those situations analytically.
Today, I'm interested in the intersection between engineering and emergency medicine. Frontline care often depends on clear information and reliable tools, especially when time and cognitive bandwidth are limited. My goal is to build a strong foundation in systems analysis and hardware so I can contribute to technologies that support clinicians in those moments. I am not interested in separating engineering from medicine. What motivates me is the possibility of bringing both together in environments where careful design can directly support patient care.
My Position on Engineering Design as an Engineering Student
Expand each principle to read the full text. The current statement and an earlier version are available as PDFs below.
The Thesis: How I engineer for communities through different lenses
My practice as an engineering student is driven by five core principles: stakeholder centricity, pragmatism, bounded rationality, impartial knowledge and sustainability. I strive to remain a learner and student first, bridging the gap between rigorous technical constraints and how human behaviour is, in nature, unpredictable.
My knowledge is always impartial, or agnostic, and this is reflected in the interpretive lens and humility I carry into engineering design. I currently see engineering design as an intersection between the models and constraints seen in my understanding of engineering and the value-driven decisions that end up shaping design. I also acknowledge that my position and understanding is continually growing and developing.
Models and verification are essential tools in progressing our understanding of our designs and the world, however they are inherently incomplete. I see true engineering design as when informed, human judgment takes over the limitations of these theoretical models.
I recognize that a design's ultimate success is determined by its real-world practicality and validating it with stakeholders. Prioritizing iterative feedback and consistent communication between the designer and stakeholders is essential to how I approach engineering.
Through new design work, my position has evolved to understand that a solution, amongst all other requirements, should be sustainablein order to function as a successful design. Society depends on sustainable practices and low-cost methods as our world's environmental longevity is slowly declining.
A Pragmatic Approach: How I balance models with real-world practicality
In my academic path within the University of Toronto, we rely heavily on structural models to quantify reality. However, as the statistician George Box noted, models are inherently incomplete simplifications. This was especially noted within a group project for our structural engineering course. While our mathematical models could calculate the precise shear and bending moments of our bridge design, the physical construction of our bridge introduced material imperfections and human construction constraints which calculations ignored.
I recognize that models only exist in a vacuum. True engineering design begins precisely when the model fails to capture the whole picture, requiring me to step in and engineer for practical realities rather than theoretical perfection.
Bounded Rationality: What frontline care taught me about designing for cognitive load
Many classical engineering and economic models assume stakeholders possess perfect knowledge and infinite time to make optimal decisions. My frontline experience has constantly shown me otherwise.
When I supervise aquatic environments or teach first aid protocols, I am reminded that humans operate under bounded rationality. In a crisis, first responders do not always have the bandwidth to optimize. Instead, they must “satisfice” (Tragakes 74), finding adequate, rapid solutions to stabilize emergencies until hospital care.
Therefore, the systems I design cannot perfectly assume rational users, I must acknowledge the unpredictability in human nature. They must be intuitive, allowing stakeholders to act effectively even when time, information, and cognitive capacity are limited.
Tragakes, Ellie. Economics for the IB Diploma Coursebook. 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2020. pp. 72–75.
The Agnostic Lens: How I embrace partial knowledge
My philosophy involves holding my assumptions very lightly. Growing up around conflicting belief systems, I learned early in my life to reflect rather than follow. Many of my current understandings also trace back to the habits and open minded thinking my English teacher encouraged in his classrooms.
This cultivated what I consider an agnostic lens on life, not as a rejection of meaning, but as a humble acceptance that my knowledge is always partial. I carry this exact humility into my engineering practice. I am drawn to problems where precision directly affects people.
Composure: How I translate musical discipline into technical execution
Through four years of playing the bass guitar for a concert band, and recently making my transition from the bass to an acoustic guitar, it's clear that technical precision is fundamental in developing good technique and sounds. However, musical ability exists to be shared. The goal is not simply just to play correctly, but to perform for an audience, something I have done countless times.
I have also been on the receiving end of a performance, having attended Taylor Swift's Eras Tour back in late 2024. The performance brought together thousands of people who shared a common expectation: to be moved, entertained, and immersed in the music. It made me realize how strongly an audience's expectations shape the success of any performance.
Ultimately, this has shown me that executing a successful design requires the same discipline as mastering a complex physical skill. Technical proficiency, much like musical performance, only gains true meaning when it resonates with its audience. In engineering, this is the community of stakeholders who rely on it.
How my position has developed (and continues to develop) over time
When I first started engineering, my position on engineering, design, and engineering design was rooted in broad philosphical concepts from my personal experiences. My core values at the time were: a focus on community, an 'agnostic' lens on life, an understanding of bounded rationality and the incompleteness of models. Over the course of my first semester, these values formalized into more specific principles: stakeholder centricity, impartial knowledge, a shift to pragmatism, and using bounded rationality in practice. The narrative of my first semester position shifts are detailed in the project descriptions for Praxis I and CIV102.
Entering my second semester, these values became the core of my initial position statement (though not written, bounded rationality was a core principle of mine). These values were used to guide my design process for Praxis II, to design a variable-resistance aquatic training mechanism for the MSSAC High Performance Swim Team. Praxis II demanded that I consider both engineering for people and engineering for the world. Through exploring cost and material constraints, I realised that a design cannot truly serve stakeholders if it ignores the world's declining longevity.
This introduced sustainability as a value of mine, and my position on engineering design has evolved to reflect this. Throughout this process, my other core values: stakeholder centricity, impartial knowledge, bounded rationality, and pragmatism, have remained core to my position and have matured as I continue to see these values in action. Today, my practice is guided by these five values.
In my first position statement, I explored how I approach engineering as an 'engineering student' rather than a 'student engineer' or 'engineering designer.' Though I now have more experience with engineering and design, I still strive to remain a student first. With this, I acknowledge that my position can be challenged, revised and expanded upon as I continue to pursue engineering education.
The earlier PDF is only slightly changed from what was submitted for coursework, to protect confidentiality where needed.
Field Notes
Continually updating. Personal experiences keep me grounded outside of work. Click to expand.