{"id":15972,"date":"2021-01-21T20:01:12","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T20:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/?p=15972"},"modified":"2021-01-21T20:01:23","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T20:01:23","slug":"from-singer-to-paratrooper-to-mathematician-this-alum-took-a-different-route-to-nasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/2021\/01\/21\/from-singer-to-paratrooper-to-mathematician-this-alum-took-a-different-route-to-nasa\/","title":{"rendered":"From singer to paratrooper to mathematician, this alum took a different route to NASA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2013By David Drucker for FIU News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Lopez \u201920 is a bit of a thrill-seeker. In his 20s, he picked up a guitar, started a folk-rock band and moved to Nashville. In his 30s, he became a paratrooper for the U.S. Army in Germany before busting his leg on a jump.<\/p>\n

Now, using his degree from FIU, Lopez is beginning another career: mathematics. And he finds it just as engaging as his other stops.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a wizard, to be honest with you. The stuff we math people do, you can\u2019t see. You can\u2019t see a derivative or an integral. But without them, we can\u2019t do all of these really cool things like split the atom, or build computers, or be able to talk to each other over the Internet,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

Lopez is beginning a job at NASA as an optical engineer, someone who works with telescopes and other visual technology.<\/p>\n

He was what some professors call a \u201cmature student.\u201d Although faculty don\u2019t receive dates of birth or personal contact information from their pupils, a student\u2019s performance sometimes makes it clear that he or she is not 18 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got a 100 percent on his first two exams,\u201d remembers Professor Taje Ramsamujh in the Department of Math and Statistics. \u201cHe is able to see the big picture better than most people. And that is because of his mathematical maturity.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a maturity that Lopez built by seeing a lot of the world.<\/p>\n

Born to Cuban parents in Hialeah, Lopez had a taste for adventure growing up. He and his cousins were surfers who roamed up and down the Florida coastline looking for the tallest waves. After breaking all of his boards, though, Lopez chose a new hobby.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard Bob Dylan when I was a younger guy, and I said, \u2018Oh yeah, I could totally do that,\u2019\u201d Lopez says of the famed singer-songwriter.<\/p>\n

Lopez was set on becoming a professional musician. He learned the guitar and harmonica, spending his time in libraries studying song books. The young performer played at bars and clubs across Miami.<\/p>\n

After a couple of years playing, Lopez decided his solo act needed to expand. He had a friend named Rose whom he knew from his day job at Starbucks. He also had a crush on her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018I need you to play with me.\u2019 And I loved him. So I said, \u2018OK,\u2019\u201d says Rose Lopez MFA \u201920, now Michael\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n

The duo started dating. They packed their bags and moved to Chicago. There, they built up their musical chops while living in a basement apartment. After a couple years, they moved to Nashville and recruited more musicians to their group.\u00a0They formed a four-piece band called The Heavy Love Cult.<\/p>\n

\"thumbnail_the-heavy-love-cult.jpg\"
The Heavy Love Cult. From left to right: Rose Lopez, Michael Lopez, Emily D’Andrea and\u00a0Sean Zwicke.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMy favorite part was getting up there in front of a bunch of strangers and singing a song you wrote. It\u2019s not even about anyone liking it or anything. It’s just having the gooseballs to go up there. It was so liberating and so thrilling. I guess I\u2019m just a junkie for that feeling,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

At some shows the band was loved and at some shows they were \u201cjust so, so bad,\u201d Rose recalls. It all came to a conclusion when a thought entered Lopez\u2019s head that forced him to reconsider his career. It was triggered by seeing a poster of the Rolling Stones, where each member of the rock group was dressed head-to-toe in eccentric clothes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was then that I started to realize, I just couldn\u2019t be that guy to do nutty stuff to get my music known,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

He shifted his focus away from music as he acted on a desire to serve his country. In 2013, Lopez enlisted in the Army. The Miami native was assigned to be a paratrooper in Germany.<\/p>\n

Right before leaving, he proposed to Rose. She said yes and followed him to Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking, \u2018He is going to go off to have adventures and trump through the woods as a soldier. I\u2019m not going to be left behind. I\u2019m going to join the Army too,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

Since they were married, the Army allowed the couple to live together in Germany. They stayed for four years.\u00a0 Lopez initially wanted to serve longer, but he had a family to look after. His wife had given birth overseas. And after breaking his leg on a jump, Lopez knew he wouldn\u2019t be of much use to the military.<\/p>\n

\"thumbnail_mike-and-annie_brandenburg-gate_berlin_2016.jpg\"
Lopez and his daughter Annie at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And so Lopez decided to get a college degree in math, a subject he had been passionate about since he was a child. He started at Miami-Dade College online while in the Army. His wife, an FIU student at the time, convinced him to finish his bachelor\u2019s at Miami\u2019s state university when they returned to the U.S.<\/p>\n

At FIU, Lopez gained a group of people to learn from as well as a quiet place to concentrate. His home base became a cluster of chalkboards outside the math department in Deuxieme Maison.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would just sit there all day between classes and do my homework or go over some topic I didn’t understand on the chalkboard. The cool thing is you have all these math majors and professors walking through. They would say, \u2018Oh, you should try it this way,\u2019 or \u2018Hey, you should think about it this way,\u2019\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

Now, as Lopez begins his new job, he readily admits that he\u2019s taken a difficult, abstract path to being a mathematician. But that\u2019s not a bad thing, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest things are the most worth doing. They give you the most pleasure, stress, anxiety and fear, but they also give you something you will never get from anybody else. No one can tell you the things you will learn when you accomplish something hard,\u201d Lopez says.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Lopez is beginning a master\u2019s in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2013By David Drucker for FIU News Michael Lopez \u201920 is a bit of a thrill-seeker. In his 20s, he picked up a guitar, started a folk-rock band and moved to Nashville. In his 30s, he became a paratrooper for the U.S. Army in Germany before busting his leg on a jump. Now, using his degree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[369],"tags":[453,377,12,428],"class_list":["post-15972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-spotlight","tag-alumni","tag-college-of-engineering-computing","tag-fiu-alumni","tag-master-of-fine-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15972"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15976,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15972\/revisions\/15976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}