About
I'm Ahilan Nayani, a sophomore in mechanical engineering at Iowa State University, graduating in December 2028. I'm looking for a Summer 2027 mechanical engineering internship.
- Program
- B.S. Mechanical Engineering
- School
- Iowa State University
- Year
- Sophomore
- Expected
- December 2028
- Seeking
- Summer 2027 mechanical engineering internship
What I work on
Most of my work is mechanical design and analysis in SolidWorks. On the Formula SAE Electric team I redesign and analyze components with force, shear, and moment analysis and FEA. In course projects I work from customer requirements through concepts to CAD.
I also write Python for modeling and data analysis, including the machine learning projects on this site.
Activities
Formula SAE Electric
Component design and structural analysis / 2026 to present
My work so far is on the brake system: load analysis and a SolidWorks redesign of the brake pedal connector with comparative FEA, and material selection for a brake-fluid reservoir spacer. See the brake pedal connector case study.
Iowa State Algorithmic Trading Club
Vice President / 2025 to present
The club has 30+ members. My part is mostly programming, automation, and modeling: I build systematic equity strategies in Python with the Alpaca API, using multi-factor signals and automated backtesting across 20+ strategies on a simulated $100K paper portfolio. I also run the club's weekly technical seminars.
Skills
- CAD and analysis
- SolidWorks, SolidWorks Simulation (FEA), engineering drawings
- Design
- QFD, Design FMEA, DFM/DFA, material selection, trade-off analysis
- Programming and data
- Python (pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, XGBoost, SHAP), machine learning, statistical analysis, Git/GitHub