Alexander “Z” Kuretski waited patiently for his dad to pick him up from day care each day as a 3-year-old. His thoughts were filled with excitement to leave day care and head over to the nearby train tracks with his dad.
“We would wait for half an hour sometimes to see if the train was coming,” Kuretski said. “When the train would come he would take me out and hold me up to the train, and I was completely digging this huge train thundering down the tracks.”
Kuretski is a fourth-year student and a mechanical engineering major at CSUN. He recalls being interested in mechanical engineering since he was a kid. He always liked the idea of building things, and especially building objects that could go fast. He went from admiring trains to finding an interest in race cars. He rebuilt his first motor at the age of 13.
“I love going fast and building stuff that allows me to do that,” Kuretski said. “I love using my brain in a creative way, not a lot of people can do that.
“I think of it as I have this blessing of being able to see the way how things come together and work together and move, and I like using that to my full extent.”
At the moment Kuretski works for Delta Tau Data Systems in Chatsworth. He has been with the company almost two years. His job there is to design and build demo robots for trade shows.
His current project is working on a mechanism which would be used in an assembly line. It picks things up and puts them down, much like a hand but uses suction, he said.
The mechanism could move one piece 12 inches about 180 times a minute.
“I’m excited to finish this project,” Kuretski said. “It pretty much has eyes and a camera where it can recognize things on a table. It’s the first one that the company has built that it can pick things up and put them down, but also turn them around.”
Building such mechanisms is not all that Kuretski wants to do. One of his goals in life is to own a race team and build his own car to race. Along with his ability to see how things work together, Kuvetski also loves the feeling of going fast.
“I’ve always liked going fast,” he said. “As a kid I would climb the biggest hill. I would get my wagon and go down (the hill) and I would love it.”
Creativity runs in Kuretski family. His dad is a professor in CSUN’s photo department, and his mother is in advertising.
High school physics opened Kuretski’s mind up to engineering. His current job introduced him to robots and his love for fast-paced machinery is what drives him to one day build the fastest race car.
“I want to be able to revolutionize the way people drive,” Kuretski said. “Not only commute but also race.
“Not only do I want to fulfill my personal vendettas of being the first one to break 300 mph in a (race) car, but I also want to be able to apply that technology to the world.”
