I knew UMD was the right choice for me because I wanted to stay close to home while also attending a large school with lots of opportunities to grow academically and as a person. I knew at UMD I could do everything from dancing in the ballet company to doing research with the synthetic biology team or climate advocacy with any of their environmental groups. 

 

In our ENES102: Mechanics 1 class, we got to design, build, and decorate a truss bridge in teams. At the end of the semester, we competed against other teams in the class to see who's truss could withstand the highest load. This project was a lot of fun and I am still friends with some of the people that were on my team. 

Favorite Class In Major

CHEM 231: Organic Chemistry 1

COMM 107: Oral Communication: Principles and Practices

iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine)
Ballet Company M
Gemstone Honors Program
SGA Student Sustainability Summit

Favorite On-Campus Event

Maryland Day is a super fun campus-wide event where all of the clubs, departments, and organizations put together activities for students and visitors. It is always really cool to see what all of the groups on campus are up to. At the last Maryland Day, there was a fire tornado display, Jeff Kinney (author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series) visited, and they even opened up the wind tunnel for visitors. 

Favorite Research or Study Abroad Experiences

In the spring semester of my freshman year, I joined the Optical Therapeutics and Nanotechnology lab in the Bioengineering department. Our lab does research on photodynamic therapy, which combines light-sensitive drugs (photosensitizers) and light to treat cancer. Recently, I worked on a project where we identified photosensitizers that could overcome drug-resistant cancer cells when combined with photodynamic therapy. Getting involved in research on campus has been super rewarding because I have been able to apply what I'm learning in my classes while doing work that will hopefully make cancer treatments better in the future. 

I learned about iGEM while attending Maryland Day the week after I committed to UMD, and have been a member since joining campus. iGEM (international genetically engineered machine) is a student competition where teams from universities all around the world come up with projects that aim to address any local/global issues using synthetic biology. This year, our team is developing a point of care cervical cancer screening kit that uses toehold switches made of RNA to identify upregulated microRNA levels in the urine of people with pre-cervical cancer. It has been really cool getting to work on a student-led project that could potentially make cervical cancer screening more accessible and I am super excited to present our project at the competition in Paris next year.