Hiya! 👋 My name is Tait Berlette!

I am a third year undergrad mechanical engineering student at the University of Toronto! All my life I've loved building things and taking things apart (and putting them back together... some of the time 🤡)!

When I was very little, I adored trains so much 💖 I would build all sorts of trains out of tissue boxes and toilet paper rolls, my grandparents had rows upon rows of shelving full of trains I had created, I was always the little engineer (even though at first I thought I was going to be a train engineer, I didn't yet realize how important building things was to me)!

We would always go out to watch trains pass by, particularly at this old wooden bridge by my grandparent's house! One day a freight train stopped just shy of the bridge to wait for a signal, and the engineers invited us aboard! No words can describe the joy I felt that day, being able to go inside and blow the horn (that's me in the red!) on a real train and seeing all the controls and panels 🫶 That definitely made a huge impact on how amazing I thought trains, and mechanical machinery, were, and fueled my passion even more! I am really grateful for those engineers who were so very kind and let us aboard!

A large part of my life has also included building Lego, we have endless amounts of Lego bricks and sets laying around in bins at my home! The sets never lasted long before I had them taken apart in pieces to create my own designs. I also loved the Lego robotics camps at University of Ontario Institute of Technology (now Ontario Tech University), and I always had a blast solving problems and working together with others to achieve a shared goal, and learn from people!

When I became a teenager, I started to drift away from the mechanical side of things and got more into computer programming. For a while I actually thought I was going to pursue computer science as a degree, which I think is influenced from my dad, who works with computers a lot! Then I came across a video series by Ben Eater, a wonderful teacher for understanding low level electronics, specifically his video series where he built a simple retro-style computer from scratch out of simple logic gates. I was so mesmerized that I wanted to build one myself, so I got the kit and got to work! The feeling of having something I built in my hands was far greater than anything I ever got programming, where it's just some code in magic computer land, nothing real... After that, my projects were leading more towards having hardware involved, such as the first version of my rotary cell phone, but still keeping the software component...

In Grade 11 Physics, we had a final project to either create a roller coaster, or a motor, and of course I just had to try to build a motor! At the end of that day presenting my final project (which of course did not work in front of him), physics teacher gave me the push to consider engineering for my future, as at the time I was still contemplating computer science, but choosing engineering was definitely the right choice for me ✨

After that push, I attempted my first big, fully mechanical project with no electronics, the pipe organ! That was such a fun project to build and problem solve, and set in stone my desire to go into engineering, and mechanical engineering ended up being my choice as I could have all the real world mechanisms, while adding in some software later in the mechatronics stream!

Something very important to me is sustainability, and I have a dream to try and create a more sustainable vehicle than what we currently have. You can read about my attempts in my unfinished sand tricycle project! While I am going to keep trying, I don't know if this specific project will ever reach a happy complete goal, but I know I am learning a lot in my research and who knows, maybe something will come out of it! All I know is that in the future, I want to keep working towards making the world a better place any way I can.

In summary, I am someone really passionate about engineering, I always been interested in the field my entire life, even if I didn't know it at the time. I absolutely love problem solving and working towards solutions, which is even reflected in the sports I've resonated with the most, curling and rock climbing, both very strategic. I know I have the ability to stick through with something when it becomes hard, I'm not one to give up on a project easily, I am very stubborn.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about me, who I am and where I want to go! Below you can learn about some of the projects and experiences I've worked on