LMS Team- Kim Toperzer
Kimberley Jane Toperzer is another new intern at Larsen Motorsports. She is an intelligent and a hard-working individual, who is currently a senior at Florida Tech dual majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. She is a Florida local, who grew up in Sebastian.
Spending every summer up in Virginia at her aunt and uncle’s zoo, she grew up with the dream of being a veterinarian. She cheerfully mentions how she used to feed alligators, play with tiger cubs, and walk elephants as a “mini zookeeper” and how that shaped her career goals as a child.
When she started Florida Tech, she still had the aspiration on becoming a veterinarian, however, now that she has been in school for a while she feels as if engineering has been slowly pursuing her and changing her mind. Kim’s plans for her future currently involve staying at Florida Tech for another couple of years and get her master’s in Biomedical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering.
After completing her education, Kim is considering designing prosthetics. An alternative job would be to work with safety equipment within the automotive industry. She also thinks that working at Disney could be an interesting opportunity considering she has been under the Disney spell ever since she was little due to her growing up so close to the amusement park.
At Larsen she is currently working on designing driver seat inserts equipped with energy absorbing foam for the Generation 6 Jet Dragsters. She is also responsible of the placement of components in the driver compartment. She is the only student intern working on the project although she is supervised and helped by Chris Larsen. She believes that if the project goes well it could be turned into her master’s thesis. However, for the time being due to the busy schedule of Larsen Motorsports she is just assisting other interns working around the shop. One of the jobs she has recently finished was helping Andrew Larsen with a J-85 jet engine assembly.
She comments how on top of enjoying her time at Larsen she is also very grateful to have been given the opportunity to intern here. Kim has been interested in Larsen ever since she started going to Florida Tech. She has always seen their posters around campus and heard about their events, but she assumed they would be only interested in Aerospace or Mechanical Engineering students until her sister encouraged her to talk to Elaine and Chris about what could she do for Larsen.
Besides being exposed to Larsen flyers around campus there was another aspect of this internship that has enticed her into wanting to work here. As another girl on the Larsen team who grew up watching races like NASCAR, Formula 1, etc. with her dad, she became a racing enthusiast. She enjoys gaining mechanical engineering experience here as much as working alongside a racing team. Besides giving her a chance to explore mechanical engineering, her internship has also taught her more aspects of biomechanics that she did not realize existed before and it only encourages her to find out even more.
She wants the outcome of her time at Larsen to have been able to maximize her knowledge on the mechanical engineering side of her major. Since BME has both medical science and engineering, she intends to use her internship as a tool too explore her capabilities as a future engineer.
As much time as Kim invests in school and at Larsen, she is even busier during what could be considered her “free-time”. Kim is currently working two jobs: Quail Valley and Brevard Zoo where she’s been working for 5 and 3 years respectively. Kim is also a part of; Biomedical Engineering Society Student Chapter, Tri-Beta Biological Honor Society, Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society, Tau Beta Phi Engineering Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, Alpha Eta Mu Beta Biomedical Engineering Honor Societies. As mentioned earlier Kim is no joke when it comes to being diligent and brilliant. These two qualities of her are only a small part of the reason why Kim is highly appreciated amongst her peers at Larsen.
When asked about what she would like to do if she was not going to school at Florida Tech and interning at Larsen she laughs and says that she would not want to do anything else, but after some consideration decides that she would be at University of Florida studying a similar topic and considering going down the veterinarian path, which only proves how much she actually is enjoying her bustling schedule.
