Jesse Lee, a former West Windsor resident, recently returned to the U.S. after a year-long exchange opportunity in Germany as a participant of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals. Affiliated with Northwestern University, where he studied mechanical engineering, he was selected as one of 75 participants nationwide for the competitive government-sponsored fellowship for young professionals between the ages of 18 and 24.
Lee moved to West Windsor in 1992. His parents, Sang Sam Lee and Hyun Suk Lee, still live in West Windsor and own a dry cleaning business in Yardville.
He graduated from High School South in 2008. During his years at South he was involved in First Edition (a capella), Noteworthy (male a capella), class council president, and math honors society. During his freshman year he played football and lacrosse and was on the swimming team.
Lee graduated from Northwestern in 2012 with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering. He departed for Germany from Washington, D.C., in July, 2012.
Participants completed internships in fields according to their professional aspirations and previous academic and work experience. Participants also had the opportunity to live with a German host and learn about daily life from a German perspective.
“I spent my first two months in language school developing German language skills,” says Lee. “I started at zero German comprehension and left Germany with professional proficiency. After language school I attended Hochschule Osnabrueck, a college of science and engineering.”
After studying process engineering, he worked for a German manufacturing company in Heek in western Germany for five months. “The company I interned for is a combined heat and power generator manufacturer, and I was responsible for learning the manufacturing process, assembling the generators, and eventually developed new models for fabrication,” he says.
Lee recently moved to Palo Alto, California, to work for an engineering and medical consulting firm. “I hope to explore this field while living and working with this community to develop sustainable and renewable technologies and lifestyles,” he says.
