Undergraduate Excellence in Leadership Award
This award salutes student leaders who not only participated in DPE events but have made significant contributions guiding a student organization to achieving its organizational goals and supporting its members’ needs.
Ana Elhom ’21, Biomedical Engineering
Ana Elhom led the Integrative Design Team on Engineering World Health Project team last fall and supported the professional growth and learning of her teammates. She helped lead a professional workshop for the entire project team and met weekly to help ensure unity moving forward with the rest of e-board. She also led a group of undergraduates to work on an independent project in the Butcher Lab. She has dedicated her time to helping students with learning new skills and demonstrating leadership.
Graduate Excellence in Leadership Award
This award honors a graduate student who is a leader that has motivated, guided, and supported their engineering organization working effectively with their colleagues, honoring the contributions of every member of the organization, and encouraging others to excel on their own while striving to improve the organization.
Gillian Hagen, Applied Physics, PhD Student
Gillian Hagen is committed to providing young students an opportunity to learn more about STEM careers and meet scientists. She organized the 2021 Virtual Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) Conference for middle school girls and non-binary students. As a first year PhD student in Applied Physics, Gillian has provided feedback on application essays for students applying to graduate school and fellowship programs as a volunteer with Black Girls Guide to Grad School. Gillian has also supported other students who identify as first-gen and/or low-income at her alma mater, Mount Holyoke College. Through this outreach, Gillian has provided interested first-gen and/or low-income students suggestions about the application process and navigating challenges related to the decision to pursue an advanced degree. Now that the conditions of the pandemic are improving, Gillian is serving as a Big through Big Brothers Big Sisters, Ithaca to provide one-on-one mentorship for a young person in Tompkins County.
Undergraduate Distinguished Service Award
This award is given to an undergraduate student who has made outstanding contributions through efforts to reach out to the Cornell community as well as beyond the University by applying their skills, knowledge, and experiences as related to their undergraduate education.
Isabella Animadu ’22, Civil Engineering
Isabella Animadu is involved in volunteer opportunities with youth organizations in the Ithaca community and dedicated to introducing local youth to STEM. Due to the pandemic, she has creatively adapted to offer programs and events in a virtual platform. She also serves as the Pre-Collegiate Initiative/Technical Outreach Community Help Chair of NSBE. Along with her service to the local community, she has served as a role model and mentor for the 2020 Pre-Freshman Summer Program cohort and served as their course assistant in ENGRG 1070 Spatial Visualization.
Niharika Shukla ’21, Mechanical Engineering
Niharika Shukla was motivated by her challenges adjusting to college to give back and be a role model. She has worked as an AEW Facilitator for Math 1920. As a facilitator she aims to encourage her students that they belong in STEM. She also volunteers with a new STEM outreach organization on campus, INERTIA. This organization hopes to change the perceived masculine look and feel of STEM to be more inclusive to women and non-binary people. She built a pop-up exhibit from scratch with other female mechanical engineers and hopes to showcase the exhibit next summer in NYC as an interactive pop-up build by women in STEM for women and young girls to visit and learn more about STEM and engineering.
Robert Mozia Graduate Distinguished Service Award
This award is presented in memory of Robert Mozia, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering, who was extremely committed to inspiring the next generation of engineers, dedicated a significant amount of energy to engaging in outreach activities and who took pride in developing a close-knit community at Cornell.
This award is given to a graduate student who has made outstanding contributions through efforts to reach out to the Cornell community as well as beyond the University by applying their skills, knowledge, and experiences as related to his or her graduate education.
Andrea Robinson, Biomedical and Biological Sciences, PhD Student
Andrea currently serves as treasurer for BGPSA, a member of GPSAFC, peer mentor coordinator for BBS-GSS and a member of the Sloan Student Advisory Committee. She has maintained her dedication to serving her communities through her many leadership positions. She and her teams have had to become very creativity and adapt this year to keep people engaged and motivated to stay connected to their communities and organizations, as staying connected has become more difficult but more important during the pandemic. Andrea also serves as the high school programs coordinator for DPE. She has reviewed over 380 applications and is planning for two virtual programs, CURIE Academy and CATALYST, for 85 students from background historically underrepresented in STEM.
Return to 2021 Annual Awards list