When University of Florida graduate Andres Espinosa isn’t optimizing supply chains, diving into transportation research or fine-tuning an artificial intelligence model to compose video game music, he often can be found on the pickleball court or strumming his guitar.
“I’ve always needed variety,” said Espinosa, who graduated in May with a degree in industrial & systems engineering. “As a kid, I wanted to be everything from a lawyer to a Minecraft YouTuber. That’s why I fell in love with UF and industrial and systems engineering—there’s always something new to explore.”
Espinosa has lived a global life. Born in Orlando, he moved to Monterrey, Mexico at the age of 6, then to Dubai, United Arab Emirates and São Paulo, Brazil and then to Gainesville for his undergraduate studies in UF’s Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE). He speaks four languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.
During his time at UF, Espinosa served as a teaching assistant for six engineering courses and was an ISE college ambassador.
“Andres is an exemplary student who consistently displays his passion, creativity and talent for both communicating and advancing engineering techniques,” said Aleksandr Kazachkov, Ph.D., assistant professor in ISE and assistant director of the Center for Applied Optimization.
Kazachkov praised Espinosa for his research and peer leadership.
Outside of the classroom, Espinosa enjoys solving complex challenges. His mantra: “You can never create a solution that is better than your understanding of the problem.”
This determination helped him win first place at the ISE Symposium for best undergraduate research poster and recognition for his innovative project connecting music and AI.
Driven by a passion for learning and a deep love for music, he set out to fine-tune an AI model capable of generating original video game music. His work showcased technical skills and highlighted creative possibilities at the intersection of engineering and the arts — offering a glimpse into how engineering and creativity can shape music through AI.
Here is more about one of ISE’s busiest graduates:
Q: What inspired you to explore the intersection of music and AI?
I love any excuse to combine a personal passion with a professional/academic skill, so I decided I wanted to finetune an AI model to output video game music. I discovered that there was no reliable way to preprocess and standardize audio MIDI files. So, I built a small package to automatically standardize over 14,000 MIDI files, which should help others who are looking to do similar work with music and AI.
Q: What was your undergraduate research?
My thesis, titled “Learning to Dispatch: A Reinforcement Learning Formulation of the Train Dispatching Problem,” combined the fields of transportation and reinforcement learning in a formulation of the train-dispatching problem as a Markov Decision Process. The whole project was an incredibly enriching blend of operations research, computer science and transportation optimization.
Q: What is a train dispatching problem?
The Train Dispatch problem is a famous operations research problem. Currently, train schedules are organized by human operators using timetables where they do their best to minimize delays and keep customers satisfied. However, the tools they use can be very difficult to interpret and make quick and accurate decisions. The goal to solve this problem is to use operations research to minimize human errors and build tools that have a lot of low-level decisions automatically completed.
Q: What did you enjoy the most about being a college ambassador?
I absolutely loved being an ISE ambassador. I really enjoyed being able to identify a problem in the ISE department and create a solution, all while having the department’s support and resources. I am most proud of the Introduction to Research Program I started and led last semester where 14 incredible students led their own research projects to jumpstart their research progress.
Q: What words of wisdom would you share with incoming engineering students at UF?
Be your past self’s biggest competitor and your future self’s greatest supporter.
Q: What are your hobbies?
I love playing guitar and listening to music. I also really love pickleball and watching movies with my friends.
Q: What’s next?
I am currently working on my second internship with Procter & Gamble and will begin a prestigious, fully funded rotational master’s program in sustainable systems engineering through Erasmus Mundus, studying in Italy, Albania and France.