My name is Maria Foudoulis.  I am a first generation Greek-American that was born and raised in Vancouver, Washington.  I completed High School at Evergreen High School and received a scholarship for pre-medicine studies at Portland State University.  After almost completing my major, I did not feel satisfied with my career choice.  I decided to switch my major to Electrical And Computer Engineering.  In 2011, I graduated with my degree in ECE with a focus on Computer Hardware.  During my last year of school, I began interning at Intel Corporation. After graduating, I stayed at Intel as a Software Engineer. Since the time I graduated, I married my best friend, and we are currently awaiting the arrival of our first child.  

After being with Intel for a few years, I have decided to continue my education.  I am very interested in learning about engineering from a “big picture” point of view.   I want to learn more about how to deal with complex systems, from a management perspective as well as a software developers perspective.  After doing some research, I saw that Systems Engineering really focuses on just that- how to deal with complex systems successfully.  Now, I am completing my program requirements and am able to find use cases at my work for what I am learning in the courses I have taken.