Trutoiu was part of the Engineering Design Clinic class at Smith College taught by Susannah Howe design clinic director and Andrew Guswa assistant professor of engineering. Together with two other students Allison Bellew and Alexander Apostol Trutoiu worked on the project: Design and Simulation of Power Management Response to Dynamic Pricing. The team was guided and coordinated by professor Judith Cardell. Over the course of the year the students designed a simulation program to model appliance behavior in response to dynamic electricity prices conducted analyses of different behavior algorithms and developed an accompanying educational module for high schools.