Matthew Thoms

Hi! I'm Matt.

I'm a materials engineering student with a love for the design process and a penchant for immersing myself in new technologies head-first.

Matthew Thoms, age 16, drinking a chai latte at a downtown Toronto tea shop.

Here's some stuff I've done:

I worked with the Queen's Engineering Teaching and Learning Team to design immersive virtual reality experiences for students.

I created an illustrative animation for Queen's University's new robotics courses.

I designed a manufacturing process for Bulk Amorphous Alloys.

I helped design a 3D-printed gearbox for a remote-controlled car.

I designed and released an open-source font in 24 days.

I made this website from scratch using Next.js and deployed it with Firebase.

Here are some of my accomplishments:

I'm a recipient of the Charles W. Drury and Kenneth B. Carruthers academic scholarships.
I have freeCodeCamp's Javascript Data Structures and Algorithms certificate.
I helped host the 2021 Canadian Materials Science Conference at Queen's.
I have a cumulative 3.65 GPA, achieving a 4.08 GPA in my 3rd year of study.

Here's some more about me:

Hey! As mentioned above, I'm Matt. If you've read through my work or you got here through my letter of interest, you've probably noticed that I'm a visual thinker and a visual worker. I love working with sketches, graphs, models, and almost any other visual representation of something you can think of. I've been told I bring a bit of an artistic flair to engineering, and that I put an A into STEM (making STEAM, I suppose).

I'm a bit of a design junkie in my free time, and I spread my extra-curricular time across a wide variety of creative interests. I love to build and modify RC cars, and even help some of my friends make modifications to theirs. I sketch almost instinctively, and drawing, whether on paper or digitally, has been something I take great comfort in since I was a child. I also enjoy learning new coding languages: in addition to teaching myself multiple Javascript-based UI frameworks (including the one used to make this site, Next.js) and expanding my knowledge of Python, I've started to teach myself C++ in the context of the Vulkan 3D graphics library.

My passion for my work has led me to be somewhat obsessively detail-oriented, and I occasionally get lost in the minutiae of perfecting a smaller portion of something when I should take a step back and analyze the big picture. However, with a good group by my side to help direct my focus, I'm an extremely dedicated worker and out-of-the-box thinker who can bring a new perspective and innovative solutions to a project.

Send me an email!