Spotlights
Michelle Brunner
Student Services Manager
I’m the Student Services Manager in the Chemical Engineering department, where I’ve been for three years.
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Dhiraj Indana
PhD
Mechanical Engineering
My parents, who are both doctors, instilled in me a love of biology.
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Karen Leung
PhD candidate
Aeronautics and Astronautics
#IAmAnEngineer: I work on developing algorithms that help robots understand the world around them, and that teach them how to move safely around humans.
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Jodi Porter
Master’s Student
Civil & Environmental Engineering
When the pandemic happened, I started watching videos on the water situation in developing nations – and I was really surprised that even here in the Caribbean, where I’m from, we have countries with serious water issues.
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Mahilet Kasahun
Master's candidate
Civil & Environmental Engineering
Ethiopia, my country, is endowed with precious gifts of nature: fertile soil, a favorable climate with thirteen months of sunshine, and abundant water.
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Amnahir Peña-Alcántara
PhD Student
Materials Science and Engineering
When I was a kid, I went to my older brother’s Lego League practices all the time. That’s really where I fell in love with the concept of building things that do something else.
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Karsu Ipek Kilic
PhD candidate
Mechanical Engineering
I’m from a very small city in Turkey where my parents were physics professors at its only university.
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Dana Cortade
PhD Candidate
Materials Science and Engineering
After a childhood seeing loved ones with mental health issues struggle with incorrect diagnoses and testing out many different types of medications, I originally went to school for psychology to help advance our knowledge of mental health.
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Kendall Beache
Coterminal MS candidate ’22
Computer Science
One of the things that’s really important to me is working to support marginalized youth to build the technical confidence they need to feel empowered in pursuing a STEM education, or really anything they’re passionate about.
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Bryce Johnson
Coterminal MS candidate
Computer Science
My path to engineering started when I was 9 and went to see the movie ‘Iron Man’ with my family.
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Jinwei Xu
PhD Candidate 2021
Materials Science and Engineering
I started out as an undergraduate majoring in physics at the University of Science and Technology in China, but in my senior year I had a chance to come to Stanford, where I learned there was a whole field that uses materials science to solve practical problems, which I’m very interested in.
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Kylie Holland, Phoebe Wall and William Alvero Koski
MS candidates
Aeronautics and Astronautics
There’s not a lot of work being done on building habitats on other planets, but our Mars Team at the Stanford Student Space Initiative is interested in just this.
Read Kylie Holland, Phoebe Wall and William Alvero Koski's story
Kylie Holland, Phoebe Wall and William Alvero Koski
MS candidates
Mechanical Engineering
There’s not a lot of work being done on building habitats on other planets, but our Mars Team at the Stanford Student Space Initiative is interested in just this.
Read Kylie Holland, Phoebe Wall and William Alvero Koski's story
Ziv Lautman
MS candidate ’21
Bioengineering
#IAmAnEngineer: I’ve always loved learning. I studied environmental engineering and eventually started a company in the environmental space, but ultimately, I really wanted to go back and do something related to human health.
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Janelle Kaneda
Coterminal MS Candidate ’21
Bioengineering
#IAmAnEngineer: All my life I’ve had a passion for dance. Understanding the movement in the human body created a curiosity as to how the physical world worked, which fed my other passion for engineering.
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Hannah Li
PhD student
Management Science and Engineering
As an engineer, you’re taught to build things, to optimize things.
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Nicole W. Xu
PhD Candidate, Bioengineering
Bioengineering
Growing up, I thought I was going to be a doctor.
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Alaisha Alexander
PhD candidate
Mechanical Engineering
While I was an undergrad at MIT, I chose mechanical engineering because it was the most broad field, and it seemed like the easiest way to touch everything.
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Zina Jawadi
Coterminal MS Candidate
Bioengineering
Robert Fulghum’s book is famously titled, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I say, “All I really need to know, I learned in speech therapy.”
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Kate Gasparro
PhD Candidate
Civil & Environmental Engineering
I’m actually a third-generation civil engineer.
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Alisha Birk, Mark Buckup, and Janelle Kaneda
B.S.H. ’19
Bioengineering
We met a patient the other day who was about 3 years old.
Read Alisha Birk, Mark Buckup, and Janelle Kaneda's story
Kolade Adebowale
PhD Candidate
Chemical Engineering
During my junior year in college, I met a few people who had been diagnosed with HIV. I was inspired by how they carried on with their lives in the face of their health challenges.
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