Building His Way Up
Bryan Hartanto loves LA freeways — even during rush hour. To this international student, there’s poetry in infrastructure.
“It continues to amaze me how engineering is so interwoven in life,” says the 20-year-old native of Jakarta, Indonesia.
Bryan grew up in a multigenerational household anchored by his grandfather’s construction company. As a boy, he amused himself stacking shoeboxes into skyscrapers and arranging cardboard cities. By age 8, Bryan was accompanying his grandfather on construction jobsites in the Greater Jakarta area.
An excellent student, Bryan attended Penabur International High School and applied to every UC campus in his senior year. To his dismay, he was rejected by all of them. His mother and uncle — who had both gone to Santa Monica College in the nineties and transferred to four-year universities — suggested Bryan follow their path.
Upon arriving at SMC in fall 2023, Bryan threw himself into campus life. Alongside a scienceheavy courseload, he held down student jobs in Admissions, the International Education Center, the STEM Program, and the Learning Resource Center — sometimes working at three departments simultaneously. He won a seat on the Associated Students board. Off campus, he participated in a NASA proposal-writing academy, a Caltech mentorship program, and a UC Irvine materials science summer internship. Aside from that, he became an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
This fall, he’ll transfer to UC San Diego as a Structural Engineering major and is planning to work with sustainable steel structures in buildings.