Grad Profile: Sian Helfrich, E’25

Graduating senior Sian Helfrich may be receiving her bachelor’s degree in engineering this coming May, but there is so much more to her than one simple degree. Helfrich has spent the last four years not only learning about Architectural Engineering, but also skateboarding, knitting, golfing and soccer to name just a few.

“Something that has been huge for me during my KU career is to find things outside of engineering,” she said.

Originally from Pratt, Helfrich’s decision to come to KU was a no brainer. Her parents had met on the Lawrence campus when they were pursuing their degrees. Her mom was a chemistry major and her dad a history major. Their connection has echoed down through the years.

“It’s a funny story,” said Helfrich, “because they met in an engineering calculus class, which makes no sense because neither of them should have been enrolled in that. That’s what makes it special to me because calculus is actually one of my very favorite subjects.”

After spending some time shadowing a structural engineering firm in Hutchison prior to starting at KU, Helfrich entered the School of Engineering as an Architectural Engineering major, but she was still looking for her niche.

Thanks to a good grade on Rémy Lequesne’s first test in his strength and materials course, Helfrich got a first look at what a graduate degree in Structural Engineering could look like.

“I can’t thank Dr. Lequesne enough,” said Helfrich. “I really didn’t believe that I could succeed, and through talking with him my whole trajectory changed. I don’t know how I would go about thanking him for convincing me to believe in myself.”

Working closely with Lequesne, Helfrich was able to get firsthand experience on structural engineering research in the Undergraduate Research Fellows Program (UGRF) where she worked on data analysis in MATLAB.

“It’s been really nice to have a foot in the door with research, so I’m not completely blindsided when I go into my master’s degree,” she said.

After her graduation in May, Helfrich is staying on campus to work as a GRA in the structures program working on completing a master’s degree and she’s already thinking of plans after that.

“I think I might want to be a professor,” she said, with a laugh. “I’m going to see if I find research fun and challenging or if I want to look for a job in the industry.”

Regardless of the future, Helfrich is keeping her options open.

“It would be awesome to come back to KU to teach, but I also know that it’s about timing and what research I end up doing,” she said. “It depends a lot on where you can fit in places.”

For students considering the School of Engineering as a place where they can fit in, Helfrich has some advice:

“Don’t let yourself limit your own potential,” she said. “There are going to be things, people and circumstances that are limiting, but it’s not productive to do it to yourself. I had to learn how to believe in myself again, and when I did, it changed everything.”