March 6, 2018

Graduate Committee
Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering
SDSU
Campus

RE: Letter of recommendation for Ms. JANAINA DA SILVA

It is a pleasure to provide a letter of recommendation for MS. JANAINA DA SILVA, who is applying for admission to graduate school.

I have known Jana since the summer of 2014, when she spent three months as an intern in my laboratory. The prior year (2013), Jana had been awarded a competitive scholarship from a program of the Brazilian government ("Science Without Borders") to spend a year of her hydraulic engineering studies in the United States. Upon completion of her studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, she applied and was succesfully awarded the summer internship in my laboratory (2014).

During her short stay in my laboratory, Jana showed a commitment to work seldom seen in her peers. She was both efficient and effective, performing all tasks assigned to her with promptness and accuracy. She excelled in PHP programming and in coding HTML pages, the bread-and-butter of our laboratory, a world-class facility in online hydraulic engineering.

Jana's performance clearly beyond reasonable expectations have earned her a current appointment as Visiting Research Scholar in my laboratory, which she began in January 2018. Well aware of Jana's exceptional academic promise, I have encouraged her to continue her studies at SDSU, with the aim of obtaining an M.S. degree. The financial support for her studies will be provided by my laboratory in the form of a graduate research assistanship (GRA).

In addition to her academic credentials, Jana is a very personable individual, who aims to better herself in all ways so that she can become a useful and productive member of society. I sincerely think it would be difficult to find someone who has more dedication, pasion, and commitment to her work than Jana. I am confident that she will do very well in graduate school and recommend her extremely highly, without any reservation.

Sincerely yours,

Victor M. Ponce
Professor of Civil Engineering