Sheyla Miramontes
Innovation Student Intern
UNM Rainforest Innovations has a student internship program where University of New Mexico students develop professional skills and a better understanding of the intersection of business, science, and law. These students come from all across campus and each provides a unique perspective and set of skills that benefit our organization.
Our featured intern this month is Sheyla Miramontes, who joined UNM Rainforest Innovations as an Innovation Student Intern in 2020. In addition to learning about technology transfer, some of her duties include drafting non-confidential summaries for technologies, creating mailing campaigns, and conducting novelty searches for technologies. When she accepted the position, she didn’t know very much about tech-transfer. “For me, learning about technology transfer has been the most valuable thing I have gotten out of this position. Prior to this position I didn’t have any knowledge of how technologies were transferred to the marketplace. Now it is a career that I could consider going into in the future.”
Sheyla is originally from Cuauhtémoc, Mexico. She lived there until the age of eight before moving to the United States with her family. “Growing up in Cuauhtémoc was really fun. There were a lot of orchards filled with apple trees so I would spend time there since my grandma owned a couple of them. I especially remember playing with neighbors and buying snacks from small corner stores. It’s interesting because certain areas of Albuquerque remind my mom and I about Cuauhtémoc a lot. There was a tortilla shop named “Tortilleria Cuauhtémoc” in Cuauhtémoc which we used to frequent and it turns out there is a tortilla shop by the same name here. Just small things like that bring back a lot of memories.”
In the future, Sheyla wants to pursue her master’s degree in Electrical Engineering in Optoelectronics. “I became interested in Optoelectronics during my senior year of High School. I took a Physics class and was fascinated by the idea of light waves after a laser demonstration my teacher did. Ever since then I’ve wanted focus on Optoelectronics.” She is currently a third-year student at UNM pursuing her Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.