My ninth grade physics teacher, Mr. Darabi, always showed up in the classroom long before the students, took off his jacket, tucked in his necktie inside his white shirt and got to work. He erased the blackboard, and, using white chalk, the only color available, divided the board with a straight line in half and started to write. He used his right hand to write on the right side of the board and his left hand to cover the left side while his penmanship made no difference. I once asked him if teaching is an easy or difficult job? His answer became my lifelong model for teaching a seminar, giving a presentation, and more. Decades later, a new meaning was added to my physics teacher's answer by Carlos Aqudelo in Dearborn, Michigan.
Carlos Aqudelo was born and raised in Medellin, Colombia, the youngest in a family of five siblings. His father, already retired, was an entrepreneur and formulator in the aftermarket friction material industry. His mother, who passed away in 2017, was a nurse, volunteered in natural disasters, emergencies, and disadvantaged communities at the regional Red Cross and local hospitals for many years, and was the first female ambulance driver in the district. The Aqudelo household was the first in the family to earn college degrees for all its children. Carlos’s oldest sister died in a traffic crash while riding a public bus with a lack of proper steering system maintenance. She happened to hop on an incorrect bus by mistake. That put the human dimension of the importance and responsibility of automotive engineering in perspective.
Carlos attended a private Catholic school and initially wanted to become an architect, having been fascinated by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The remnants of his passion for design and aesthetics are still present in his PowerPoint presentations. Nevertheless, watching his father design and build production equipment inspired his interest in engineering and technical systems. He decided to apply to a new engineering program, Production Engineering, in Colombia, commissioned by the European Union to RWTH (Rhenish-Westphalian Technical College) Aachen University and Ruhr-Universität Bochum to bolster engineering skills such as manufacturing, mechanical, electrical, process, automation, and quality control in support of economic growth for small and medium-sized enterprises.
During his studies, Carlos found three mentors: his Descriptive Geometry professor, who taught him to pay attention to detail and to look at things from different perspectives; his mechanical systems design professor, who engrained his passion for designing and applying standards and always remember there is no such thing as a perfect design; and Professor Naranjo, who taught Carlos about the pre-Socratic discipline and methods. Lastly, his summer reading brought him knowledge from historical figures, from Shakespeare to Galileo, Blaise Pascal to Jacques Monod, and Claude Levi-Strauss to Carl Sagan.
Carlos is proud of several milestones in his life: having learned English as a Foreign Language in Vermont upon his graduation from high school; his marriage; and migrating to the states from Colombia in 2001.
Upon graduating from EAFIT, the School of Administration, Finance, and Technology, University in Medellin, Carlos joined the local Renault assembly plant as a logistics coordinator for import systems such as body-in-white, braking systems, and electronics. After a short stint with Renault, he joined his family business as the lead engineer, designing and building hydraulic presses, brake block slitters, and automated curing ovens with SIMATIC S7 systems, integrating safety, ergonomics, and efficiency into the design and operation. After getting married to his wife, Margarita, and completing post-graduate specialized studies in project management and finance, he experimented for three years in the corporate world and joined the Strategic Planning team of the largest insurance company in Colombia, working with IBM Consulting and McKinsey during a reengineering initiative. After a stint working in the family business, as General and Engineering Manager, Carlos together with his wife decided to take the leap and migrate to the United States to offer their daughter a better and safer future, given the dire political and safety situation in Colombia through the 1980s and 1990s in order to fulfill his teenage dream of living overseas.
After joining LINK in 2001 in the testing division, he was fortunate to have had several positions as lead test engineer, Engineering Manager, Chief Engineer, and his current position as Director of Applications Engineering. Under the mentorship of Roy Link and Tim Duncan, he joined several BMC, ISO, and SAE working groups and committees, producing more than 20 international standards. Over the past 20 years, Carlos has acted as Secretary, Vice-Chair and Chairperson on the SAE Brake Dynamometer, SAE Brake Lining, SAE Brake NVH, SAE Truck and Bus Hydraulic Brake, SAE Vehicle Dynamics, and SAE Wheel Standards Committees. Having been exposed to the knowledge of others, he worked with the brake industry to develop a model to estimate compliance for stopping distance per the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) 105 and 135 for light vehicles, combining SAE inertia dynamometer test results, vehicle measurements, and vehicle dynamics models.
In his current capacity, and probably until retirement, Carlos remains focused on helping the industry develop cleaner and safer braking and tire systems, collaborating with the European Commission Working Groups on brake emissions, contributing with data and content to the current GTR 24 and upcoming for commercial vehicles, and tire abrasion, developing and integrating test systems and methods for those, and acting as LINK’s liaison to California Air Resources Board for on-vehicle emissions measurements, railway brake and wheel emissions. His early exposure to so many authors and perspectives allowed him to see things with a sense of awe and embrace uncertainty. The latter reflects Carlos’s interest in becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt and combining statistics with International Standards for uncertainty and variability.
Ignorance is the ultimate form of oppression, and everything and anything Carlos can contribute to common knowledge and understanding of facts is of utter importance to all decisions and actions. Carlos has ingrained in his daughter, colleagues, and teammates three principles: what information, or data, are available, what it means, and what could be done about it. Being respectfully and diligently transparent, driven to action, and working towards a higher-order, including non-written, mandate and responsibilities – corporate, industry, and societal – have been useful principles and compasses to his career and personal progress. Every challenge calls for action, and every action calls for careful and practical considerations of benefits, efforts, risks, and potential outcomes, including unintended. Even though sometimes the right decision is not to act on some things or let them go.
Carlos has had many people influence his career besides his parents and professors. His first boss at LINK, Tim Duncan, Arnie Anderson, and colleagues he still has the opportunity to work with or follow, such as Jarek Grochowicz, Hiroyuki Hagino, David Antanaitis, Rick Kaatz, Thomas Salewski, Jana Light and Heinz Bacher are among the many he looks to to hone his knowledge and contribute to the engineering community at large. Mentioning the list of LINK colleagues from whom Carlos has learned so much or admired over the years would take up half of this writing. Yet, he can say just a few, including the late Ron Kelly, Mike Perry, Radek Markiewicz, Lee Davis, Jeff Lesko, Dave Zander, Terry Woychowski, and Tim Olex. Again, reading all of William Shakespeare's works, most of Marcel Proust's, and watching the work of James Burke, historian of science and author, have guided his approach to many aspects and projects throughout his career. All things considered, the most influential challenge he undertook, teaming up with his wife, was the migration to the United States resulting in changing culture, location, weather, language, and career path, all compressed into a three-month process.
Working long hours and many weekends watching dynamometers run and compiling the collective knowledge of many into International Standards, technical papers, and presentations, Carlos had the unwavering support of his wife compensated with long walks in nature being lucky to live next to Ann Arbor, Michigan and travels – from the Serengeti and the Namibian desert to the Australian Outback, and from Oslo to Barcelona, Berlin – his favorite city, Milan, and Crete – many times with their daughter Sofia to show her the world in real 3D. Classic rock and following scientific, evolution and astronomy, and political developments are also part of their regular activities with friends and family. Besides reading about great minds (from Richard Feynman to Alexei Navalny), reading about statistics and environmental sciences also takes part of his time for learning.
As Carlos approaches retirement within five years, he looks forward to contributing to two dimensions of current automotive developments: implementing driving circuits, test methods, and test systems to measure and reduce non-exhaust emissions from brakes, tires, and rail wheels and integrating simulation tools as part of the system development and validation processes. Mentoring younger colleagues, passing the baton on contributing to Standard Development Organizations, and sharing his gained knowledge of statistical methods are also at the top of his mind.
Outside work and as part of early retirement planning, splitting time between Michigan and Colombia, Carlos and his wife embarked on a Quixotic endeavor to establish a privately owned nature preserve located two hours driving up the mountains, followed by a two-hour horseback ride in rural Colombia. They took ownership this past summer, and it has become their second passion, second only to life in the U.S. and their only daughter's wedding in early 2025.
Many lessons have been learned. The top ones are simple and short. Replace should with could in your vocabulary. Don’t be afraid to say, "I don’t know yet." Embrace uncertainty. Do your best not to leave a statement alone without a data point, and don’t give a data point without a reference value to compare it to (Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling). Provide recommendations to make progress, acknowledging that most decisions in life are non-binary, with the third or the fourth option ending up better than the initial two.
I had the pleasure of having Carlos Agudelo in my class at an in-house seminar at Link-Engineering in Dearborn, MI. As always, I was facing the eager participants with my presentation behind me. I knew my materials by heart, thanks to having delivered them time and over. As usual, I remembered my physics teacher from ninth grade telling me that “teaching is easy if you face the blackboard and your back is all that students see; and it’s challenging if you face the students throughout class”. As usual, that day in Dearborn, MI I was facing the attendees. Carlos kept asking me questions. Many new ones that not only were challenging, but also made me take a mental note to revise some of my presentation. Driving to the airport, I tried to draw a parallel between what my physics teacher said more than half a century ago and what Carlos asked me as I faced him in class. I finally came to realize that people like Carlos Agudelo help you become even a better teacher. I am very grateful for that…
Editor's note: We are seeking to highlight the professional journeys of individuals who have made significant contributions to Brake Technology or Business. Referrals are encouraged.