Beyond 100 * 35: The Story Behind CETL’s Mural
Every visitor who walks into the Center of Excellence for Transportation and Logistics (CETL) at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) is greeted by a mural. Under a waving Puerto Rican flag, a gantry crane lifts a container, a forklift moves pallets, a blue truck rolls toward the viewer, a plane takes off, and a container ship bearing the CETL name sits ready at the dock. The mural was not commissioned from a professional artist. It was designed by one of the Center’s own graduate students, who had never made a mural or a digital design before.
Graduate student Wendy Pulido with the mural she designed for CETL’s September 2025 inauguration.
Wendy Pulido, a master’s student in Industrial Engineering from Colombia, had been in Puerto Rico for about eight months and had been working with Dr. Héctor J. Carlo, CETL’s Principal Investigator, for several months. She had never told him that she painted. That changed when her grad student colleague and first Puerto Rican friend on the island, suggested that Wendy could create something for the new Center.
[CITA DEL DR. CARLO #1: por qué quiso un mural en el CETL y por qué se lo encargó a Wendy. Formato: “…,” said Dr. Héctor J. Carlo, CETL’s Principal Investigator.]
A Six-Week Deadline
With about a month and a half to go before the inauguration, Dr. Carlo shared the team’s ideas for the space. Within a week, Pulido had a first draft. The team loved it and asked for only minor changes, which she worked in while making sure the colors and elements truly represented the island and connected with transportation and logistics. From the very first conversation to the final design took about three weeks.
“A week before I started, I had bought a tablet to take notes for my classes,” Pulido said. “I never imagined I would end up using it to design a mural of that size.” It was her first mural project and her first digital design for CETL.
From Lines to Color
When Dr. Carlo saw the first draft, Pulido suspects he pictured the final piece in black and white, with only the outlines. When she showed him the color version, he loved it. Pulido first designed the mural in a wide, rectangular format, because the team expected it to go on a structure shaped like container. Once the final wall was chosen and measured, she resized the canvas and rearranged every element into a squarer composition.
Pulido’s first draft: line art in a wide, rectangular format. The final design became a squarer composition in full color.
Two Sides of One Island
Pulido built the mural around two ideas that complete each other. One is Puerto Rico’s culture and natural wealth: the coquí, the plantain plant, the beaches, and the flag. The other is the transportation that moves the goods, that power the economy and reach the people across the island: the ship, the crane, the forklift, the truck, and the plane.
“After eight months in Puerto Rico, I had seen how much Boricuas love the coquí, the plantain plant, their beaches, and their flag,” she said. “Capturing that sense of belonging was essential for me. I wanted the mural to shout that this Center was from Puerto Rico to the world.”
One detail is easy to miss. Pulido drew a frame around the scene, and some elements break out of it. Those are the means of transportation and logistics, which, in her words, carry Puerto Rican talent and the drive to develop the island “beyond the 100 by 35 miles.”
What does “100 x 35” mean?
Puerto Rico’s main island measures roughly 100 miles long by 35 miles wide, a figure Puerto Ricans often use as shorthand for the island itself. The mural’s message is that the island’s reach is not limited by its size.
The original design for the CETL mural. Notice the elements that break out of the frame.
From Colombia to Mayagüez
Pulido was born in Bahía Málaga, in Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast, a place of waterfalls, rivers, and untouched beaches. She grew up mostly in Soledad, Atlántico, on the country’s Caribbean coast. Growing up by the sea gave her a sense of familiarity with Puerto Rico before she ever arrived. That cultural closeness, along with friends’ strong reviews of UPRM’s professors and its focus on STEM innovation, brought her to Mayagüez.
“It was where I found the perfect balance between my plan to keep studying and preparing professionally, and the chance to do it somewhere that made me feel at home,” she said.
Where Art Meets Engineering
Pulido has no formal art training beyond school classes, but art runs in the family: her father is a musician, her grandfather played the saxophone, and all her siblings play at least one instrument. During the pandemic, she began painting acrylics on canvas as a hobby and sharing them on Instagram. Friends started commissioning pieces, and the hobby became a small business. Until the mural, though, every piece she had painted followed a client’s request. “Being asked to make a mural with complete creative freedom was really exciting,” she said.
[CITA DEL DR. CARLO #2: Wendy como ejemplo del talento que forma el CETL, una ingeniera que también aporta creatividad.]
A Gift for Every Guest
The artwork did not stay only on the wall. For the inauguration, Pulido’s design was reproduced as a limited edition of serigraph prints, each numbered and signed by hand by the artist, and given to the guests. Industry leaders, partners, and sponsors who attended took a piece of the Center home with them.
Pulido signs the limited-edition prints given to guests at CETL’s inauguration.
“They Think the Artist Is Boricua”
The largest canvas Pulido had painted in Colombia measured about 150 by 60 centimeters. The CETL mural is about [confirmar medidas del mural]. Seeing a design she had created for a country she had known for only nine months at that scale was, she said, “inevitably striking and moving.” Its placement makes it the first thing people see when they enter the Center.
What she enjoys most is people’s reaction. “In person and on social media, people have told me they think whoever made the mural is Boricua,” she said. “That tells me I achieved my goal: to represent Puerto Rico in a way its people can identify with and recognize themselves in.”
Making the Island Her Own
Asked how a Colombian student came to call Puerto Rico “our island,” Pulido points to its people and their resilience: professors, friends, and strangers who welcomed her as an international student far from her family, and who remain committed to the island’s progress despite adversity.
That feeling also drives her research. Pulido is developing the Puerto Rico Freight Data Observatory, which reconstructs how cargo moves across the island’s municipalities to support better decisions on infrastructure and freight transportation. She is the first author of a paper on this work accepted for presentation at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in January 2027.
“Just as Puerto Rico has given me the opportunity to grow, I want my work to contribute to its future,” she said.
A Vision on the Wall
CETL was created in 2025 with a 10-year, $10 million investment from Saltchuk Resources and broad industry engagement, and it is the first center of its kind in the Caribbean.
[CITA DEL DR. CARLO #3: la reacción de invitados, socios y Saltchuk al ver el mural y recibir las serigrafías en la inauguración.]
So what should an industry leader think the first time they see the mural? “That Puerto Rico is the cherry on top,” Pulido joked. Then, more seriously: “That CETL is the ideal space to develop their ideas hand in hand with Puerto Rico’s best talent, where academia, industry, and Puerto Rican talent come together to turn knowledge into solutions that reach beyond the island’s borders.”
“This mural represents a vision,” she said. “The potential of an island is not measured only by its geography, but by its people’s ability to create, innovate, and open paths toward the future.”
Want to see the mural in person or learn how your organization can collaborate with CETL? Contact us at cetl@uprm.edu or visit uprm.edu/cetl.
