Bio

Born and raised in Garden Grove, California, Franklin Ly has his eye on the prize. During his high school career, Franklin received numerous accolades giving up most of his time to help out with the community. Franklin's mentality pushed him to be an outstanding student, so much that he received a full-ride scholarship to college funded by the Gates Millennium Scholarship Foundation.  

He currently attends the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Senior. In between balancing his studies in Mechanical Engineering and being a citizen of the world, Franklin studied abroad in Thailand and was an active member of the Vietnamese Student Association. Upon these extracurriculars, he founded the UCSB Chapter of International Health Collective. International Health Collective helped design and implement rocket stoves made of cinder blocks to help a poor community in Tijuana, Mexico. This project was additionally endorsed by the Mexican government.  

Franklin decided that he wanted to obtain a TMP Certificate to satisfy his venturing spirit. After taking an Entrepreneurship course and leading the team, Franklin communicated with the College of Engineering advisers to work on that idea as a Senior capstone project, and he joined the New Venture Competition hosted by the Technology Management Program in order to learn how to turn this project into an effective startup company. 

In the summer before senior year, Franklin picked up a research opportunity to simulate earthquakes and its effects on various terrains. Franklin is now performing research under Chancellor Yang, and will be continuing his education in a Ph.D program at UC Santa Barbara in Mechanical Engineering. 

Throughout his college career, Franklin’s true traits started to shine through. Franklin is a natural-born leader who has the ability to evaluate situations from many perspectives, listen carefully to the opinion of others, and is persistent. He brings his passion and excitement to all of his work, which has lead him to delve further into his interest in entrepreneurship.