Omar Banafa | Mechanical

🧰 Experience

Mechanical Design Engineer

Vista Robotics — San Jose, CA

June 2024 – August 2025

Worked on the mechanical assembly and integration of a prototype cart and base designed to support a future spinal-surgery robot aimed at enabling less invasive procedures. Translated provided drawings and schematics into a build-ready prototype by assembling structural components, organizing fasteners and bearings, and adjusting parts using shop tools to resolve fitment and tolerance issues. Contributed to basic electrical integration, including wiring a power supply and microcontroller to control stabilizing caster wheels. The prototype was successfully tested, and lessons learned were used to inform future design iterations.

Mechanical Design Intern

Vista Robotics — San Jose, CA

August 2024 – May 2025

Contributed to a two-semester mechanical design project as part of a multidisciplinary design team, supporting research, design discussions, and system-level planning. Participated in regular design team meetings to evaluate concepts and requirements, and assisted with background research to inform design decisions. Supported the dynamics portion of the project by helping analyze motion and forces, using these insights to guide iteration and improve overall system understanding.

Quality Assurance Technician

BAMREC — Los Gatos, CA

April 2021 – July 2022

Tested three core production applications by executing manual and regression tests to validate functionality, stability, and user experience. Authored and maintained over 100 test cases in TestRail, documented crashes and UI defects with clear reproduction steps, and verified fixes in collaboration with developers. This work improved documentation quality, reduced production bugs, and helped establish more consistent and repeatable testing practices.

⚙️ Projects

Word Tracer Robot

Developed a MATLAB and Simulink based simulation as a term project for a robotics course, focused on converting user input text into executable robot trajectories. The team chose simulation over physical hardware to explore motion planning and inverse kinematics in a controlled environment. A key challenge was generating clean and readable letter paths by defining appropriate waypoints and trajectory shapes, as well as resolving scaling issues when longer words exceeded the available workspace. To address this, a scaling factor was introduced to dynamically resize trajectories based on input length. My contributions focused on implementing the indexing logic used to extract and sequence letter trajectories, along with developing supporting MATLAB code and Simulink blocks to integrate the full pipeline.

MATLAB Simulink Robotics Inverse Kinematics

Mechatronics Fire Response Rover

Designed and built an autonomous fire response rover as part of a mechatronics course project, serving as team lead while also contributing directly to system integration and control logic. The rover combined ultrasonic and infrared sensors, motors, servos, and a pump system controlled through an Arduino based architecture. A major challenge was coordinating all subsystems to operate cohesively rather than as isolated behaviors. To resolve this, the team simulated the electrical circuit used on the Arduino and iteratively tested and refined the control code until the subsystems functioned reliably together. I oversaw system level testing and helped debug integration issues, ultimately delivering a rover that successfully passed the final demonstration.

C++ Arduino Mechatronics Controls

Self Balancing Robot

Designed and implemented a self balancing robotic system as part of a mechatronics course project, following provided guidelines while applying concepts developed through prior laboratory work. My contributions focused on system modeling, controller implementation, and software development rather than hardware assembly. The primary challenge was identifying appropriate gyroscope parameters to achieve stable balancing behavior, which required extensive tuning and iterative testing within MATLAB and Simulink. Through repeated code refinement, parameter adjustment, and data collection, the system consistently balanced long enough to validate performance and repeat experiments across multiple trials.

Controls MATLAB Simulink Arduino MPU 6050 LQR

NASA Community College Aerospace Scholar

Participated in a four week NASA Community College Aerospace Scholar workshop focused on future lunar and Mars exploration concepts, featuring guided instruction, team based design work, and technical talks from NASA engineers and project leaders. Served as the Mechanical Engineering lead for the team, responsible for mechanically driven subsystems including structural concepts, mobility considerations, excavation related ideas, and system level trade studies. The project goal was to design a rover that maximized mission capability while remaining cost effective under strict budget and power constraints. Contributed to feasibility analysis and concept development, culminating in a final presentation that justified the selected rover design.

Aerospace Systems Engineering Design Trade Studies

🎓 Education

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

San José State University

Fall 2022 – Spring 2025

A.S. Mathematics

Mission College

Fall 2019 – Spring 2022

📐 Skills

Engineering

SolidWorks

Fusion 360

MATLAB

Simulink

C++

Python

Hardware

Arduino

Raspberry Pi Pico

Machining

Mill

Lathe

Bandsaw

Drill Press

✉️ Contact

📧 [email protected]

💼 linkedin.com/in/omarbanafa

📍 Milpitas, CA