Hello and thank you for visiting my website!

My name is Vasiliki Hamakiotes, but most people call me Liki (and no... not like a leaky faucet).

I am a Greek American born and raised in New York City. My apartment, while already filled with four children, myself being the third, was also filled with animals (lizards, birds, fish, dogs, cats, a bunny, you name it). I've been fortunate to grow up not only in the city but with time upstate and in Greece, where concrete gave way to forests, coastlines, and the kind of unstructured adventure that only happens when family and nature are involved. When I am not working, I am traveling, playing sports, playing games with friends, baking, cooking, or learning how to make something new.

You may be asking yourself: why is this girl an engineer? Where else would I have gotten the inspiration if I didn't grow up watching MacGyver thinking he had the coolest job in the world? I watched him look at a pile of nothing and somehow see a solution and then I'd watch my mother, my real-life MacGyver, continue to do the same around the house, never paying someone else to come and fix something broken. I wished so desperately that when I grew up, I would be able to do the same thing.

Now that I've become an engineer myself, I understand that what the two of them taught me is that engineering is all about the ability to see possibilities where others see limitations. No matter what the constraint is the challenge remains the same: understand the problem, work with what you have, and create something that works.

Whether I'm designing a building, problem-solving onsite, developing a product, or tackling a technical challenge, that process of transforming constraints into opportunities is what continues to excite me about growing as an engineer.