Class of 2023 - Student Spotlights

Meet some of the members of a class poised to make the world more sustainable, resilient, healthy, secure, equitable, and liveable–in short, a better place.

They’re the reason we can say we’re engineering optimism here at NYU Tandon.

Valedictorian - Joshua Lee

B.S. ComputerScience andEngineering/Mathematics

Many people call themselves citizens of the world, indicating their love of travel and openness to new cultures, but Joshua Lee is, perhaps, more entitled to that description than most. The numbers tell part of the tale: as a teenager, he attended four different high schools in three different countries.

There is, however, much more to his story than an exceedingly peripatetic academy journey. Lee was born in Los Angeles but immigrated to Alberta, Canada, as an infant. His mother, a native of Korea who was fiercely entrepreneurial and drawn to the West by the seemingly limitless possibilities moving presented, opened a gas station there. Lee explains that while a gas station might seem an odd choice of business for a young single mother, she had always been infused with a sense of adventure: among her former jobs was shepherding groups of Korean tourists through Israel–a country where she lived for a time.

Lee credits her for his current success: it was she who insisted he study abroad in an effort to expand his horizons, arranging for him to go from his Canadian high school to a rigorous international program in Shanghai for a year. “Besides the normal culture shock, I experienced academic shock,” he recalls. “I went from reading the Percy Jackson books back in Canada to being expected to understand Socrates in China.”

When his year in Shanghai was over, he traveled to Kentucky–a surprisingly diverse and welcoming place, he says–to attend an exchange program at Villa Madonna, a Catholic school, and from there he settled in Los Angeles, where his mother was then managing a clothing store. “She is a wonderful role model,” Lee says. “She always rolled with the punches, and she sheltered me from any struggles she was going through. When I got accepted to NYU Tandon, she was emphatic that I was going to attend, no matter what.”

Lee had always excelled in mathematics, but during the isolation of the pandemic, when there was little to occupy him except problem sets, he had an epiphany: he enjoyed his courses in C++ and algorithm design more than his pure math classes. “When I studied computer science, I felt almost a childlike sense of excitement,” he says.

That excitement translated into stellar academic performance: Lee was assigned to become the head teaching assistant for Design and Analysis of Algorithms, and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) in C++, and he’s ending his time at NYU Tandon as valedictorian of the Class of 2023.

It has also resulted in a job at tech giant Qualcomm, where he will start after graduation as a software engineer in the San Diego-based machine learning group. “I’ll be working on a mobile platform called Snapdragon, optimizing models for Qualcomm clients” he says, “and I anticipate exploring new areas of computer science.” He’s also anticipating moving back to the West Coast, where his mother now works as a team leader at a major retailer. “I wouldn’t have gotten the benefit of an NYU education without her,” he stresses. “When I address the audience at commencement as valedictorian, I’ll be reminding my classmates how much we owe our professors, family, and friends for helping us get where we are.”

Sheila Atieno

M.S. BiomedicalEngineering

Growing up in Kenya, Sheila Atieno–driven by the death of some of her family members– aspired to pursue medical science, with a focus on cancer research. “My purpose is more than just a career,” she says. Given the rare (but thankfully growing) opportunities for women in biotech in her native country, she aims to promote opportunities for other women in STEM in Kenya as well.

Since Atieno arrived in the U.S., opportunities have abounded, and at Tandon, she has worked in both Assistant Professor David Truong’s lab, dedicated to cell programming and genome engineering, and the Molecular Biology for Environmental Metagenomics Lab, overseen by Assistant Professor Elizabeth Henaff. She has thus acquired extensive experience in various fields, including synthetic biology and the microbiomes of urban areas.

If you assume she spends all of her time behind a lab bench, however, you’d be wrong. Atieno serves as president of NYU’s Biomedical Engineering Society–a group with a packed schedule of professional development, networking, and social events–and she has taken part in Girls Who Code at NYU and the Black Student Health Association, aimed at aspiring Black healthcare professionals. If all that wasn’t enough, she is a longtime volunteer with several organizations, including the Red Cross, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and the faith-based CRU Bridges International.

She envisions a career that combines her talent for scientific research, dedication to improving health outcomes, and determination to contribute to the social good in meaningful ways. “I’m grateful that what I’ve learned at Tandon will enable me to be an agent of change,” she says.

Rahnuma Tarannum

M.S. CUSP

Rahnuma Tarannum spent the first 15 years of her life in Bangladesh, learning English from watching Hollywood films with her big brother. “My family is very traditional, but he always advocated for me and insisted that I should be free to break away from conventional gender roles,” she says. “When my father won the visa lottery to come to the U.S. with my mother and me, he stayed behind since he was a doctor, and his services are very much needed in our native country, but he still roots for me and acts as my mentor and role model.”

Settling in New York City, where her father found work driving a taxi, Tarannum enjoyed figuring out how the city and its transportation systems worked. After earning her bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Queens College, she searched for a way to give back to the city she had come to love and hit upon the idea of studying at Tandon’s Center for Urban Science and Progress.

With her brother’s encouragement, Tarannum had begun to spread her wings, interning for New York City Council Member Ben Kallos and working for the Bryant Park Corporation and 34th Street Partnership during her undergraduate years. Now she challenged herself even further, taking on the role of project manager during her capstone (a social justice initiative that involved analyzing Brooklyn’s surveillance technologies for further accountability by law enforcement and government agencies.) and winning an internship as a Data Research Associate for the MTA. “I worked on a project to make the agency’s open-data dashboard more transparent, easier to navigate, and inclusive of more up-to-the-minute information,” she says, “and that proved to be a real boon to journalists and others needing timely, comprehensive information.”

Tarannum apparently impressed not only the users of the dashboard but also her managers at the MTA: directly after graduating, she’ll be starting a full-time position as a data science specialist.

Swarnashri Chandrashekar

M.S. Electricaland ComputerEngineering

Swarnashri Chandrashekar was not one of those kids who always knew that they wanted to be an engineer or scientist. There were just so many interesting things to explore. “I loved the idea of archaeology,” she says, “but then when my cousin showed me a model skull she had gotten, I started thinking about medicine.”

Her father, who had gone into banking after being advised that it was an exceptionally secure career, had longed during his own youth to become an engineer, however, and when Chandrashekar was in sixth grade, he introduced her to her first computer programming language.

She was hooked.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Chandrashekar embarked on a career as a software engineer at Collins Aerospace (now part of Raytheon), in Hyderabad, where she joined a small group assigned to develop an on-ground simulation system for their Flight Control Systems team. In the process, she discovered a love for computer architecture and became determined to expand her knowledge of accelerators and other digital hardware components.

With most academic programs focused on software, she began the arduous process of researching the researchers and came upon the name of Brandon Reagen, an expert in designing specialized hardware accelerators for applications like deep learning and privacy-preserving computation.

There was just one catch: Reagen was a faculty member at Tandon, in far-off Brooklyn; the most Chandrashekar had seen of the U.S. had been during a brief visit to Iowa, where Collins was headquartered. Despite some trepidation, she headed to New York City, and was happy to discover that the program was exactly what she envisioned. “Professor Reagen challenged me to choose an application and make it smarter, faster, and more cost-effective, and I learned a lot from designing an ASIC for one of the slower genome analysis workloads,” she says.

That experience helped win her an internship at SiFive, a company focused on RISC-V architecture for the semiconductor industry, and after graduation she’ll be headed to Austin, Texas, to work at a company known as ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) “I may consider a doctoral degree in the future, and I would love to start my own heterogeneous systems enterprise one day,” she says, “but right now I’m excited to embark on this next stage of my career, which would not have been possible without NYU Tandon.”

Minh Tran

M.S. ComputerScience and Engineering

Minh Tran has devoted her academic research to improving the efficiency of solar cells–a major task if the global energy sector is to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

The issue with current silicon solar panels is that they are not the best match for the solar spectrum. Only certain wavelengths can be efficiently used with existing cells. For example, ultraviolet light is not converted to electrical power as well as infrared light, and this means that a great deal of the potential energy that could be captured is wasted.

What if instead of changing the panels, we changed the sun itself, she wondered.

Working in the lab of Professor Eray Aydil, she has developed a film coating that can be applied to solar panels to change the light spectrum, turning ultraviolet light (from the less efficient band of the spectrum) into near-infrared light (the more efficient source for solar cells). The innovation recently took home the top prize at Energy Tech UP, the Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions annual competition, and the next steps include launching a startup to scale and market the product, which not only boosts solar-panel efficiency but reduces degradation and eliminates the dangerous lead that is found in most coatings of its kind.

The winner of the 2022 NYU Professor Turner Alfrey Prize and 2021 Nellie Yeoh Whetten Award, aimed at recognizing and encouraging excellence by women in STEM graduate studies, Tran is on an undeniably sunny entrepreneurial path.

Omer Keles

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Many students would acknowledge that engineering programs are so rigorous that the prospect of adding a second challenging major would seem daunting, to say the least.

Omer Keles is not easily daunted, however, and while earning his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, he double-majored in public policy at NYU Wagner. “I’ve always loved assessing problems analytically and really enjoyed learning technologies like CAD,” he explains. “Yet I also loved English literature; foreign languages; and the social sciences. So I always knew I wanted whatever I did to be interdisciplinary.”

(Outside of his native English and Turkish, he can also speak Spanish and read and write in Arabic.)

That commitment to breaking down silos applies not only to his majors but his outside activities–a small sampling of which includes becoming a National Grid Engineering Pipeline Scholar; assuming the presidency of the NYU student chapter of SAMPE (the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering); taking on a post as a district representative and the CTO of the Mandate Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit dedicating to improving governance with technology; making the semifinals of NYU Stern’s 300K Entrepreneurs Challenge as part of the power bank rental startup CoCharge LLC; and penning a scholarly article published in the peer-reviewed journal Telecommunications Policy on the regulatory problems posed by space debris. In it he explains that the accumulation of orbital space debris poses serious dangers to the long term sustainability of our satellite systems, and that existing policy frameworks surrounding the launch of man-made objects and expeditions into space are inadequate to deal with the long-term consequences.

Keles–who was born in Istanbul but settled in the U.S. as an infant when his parents immigrated in order to earn doctoral degrees at Syracuse University (his mother in political science and his father in cultural anthropology)–says that Tandon allowed him to take paths he didn’t expect. “In my very first general engineering course, we learned about the importance of being able to pivot, and I’m trying to apply that ethos to my studies and career,” he says.

He plans to next earn a master’s degree in public administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University, a top-ranked school for public affairs, with the ultimate goal of using his engineering mindset to inform more efficient policy making. Technical innovations need to consider policy, or dilemmas like those surrounding space debris will inevitably arise, he explains, and it’s equally shortsighted to set policy without a grounded analytic perspective. That old saying that’s popular among engineers and carpenters–”Measure twice, cut once” —has applicability in a lot of sectors, he asserts.

Luke Buttenwieser

B.S. Technology,Culture, and Society

Many undergraduates would consider themselves lucky if they found a steady, low-pressure job in a retail establishment or restaurant; when he wasn’t in classes, Luke Buttenwieser spent his undergraduate years managing the Stamford Department of Transportation, Traffic & Parking’s Vision Zero initiative, aimed at eliminating roadway fatalities; coordinating the Connecticut city’s outdoor dining program; managing roadway improvement projects totaling more than $10 Million and writing more than $50 million in grant proposals; reviewing Zoning Board applications; managing the installation of pavement markings on 315 miles of roadway–and let’s not forget investigating and replying to citizen complaints.

It would be a tall order for even the most seasoned transportation professional, but Buttenwieser, whose first word as a toddler was “bus,” was offered the opportunity to join the department shortly before graduating from Stamford’s King High School in 2019, after officials saw the results of a volunteer project he had undertaken that involved collecting and analyzing data on vehicle speeds and the city’s efforts to calm traffic. Working while taking a full course load had its challenges, he admits, but his classes and labs helped him in his job, and vice-versa, he says.

For his capstone project, he used AutoCAD to design a plan to make St. Mark’s Place, a busy street in downtown New York, safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, and he is now headed to the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service to earn a master’s degree in urban planning.

Wherever the road takes him after that, it will probably be a safer, more efficient, more sustainable road if he has anything to do with it.

Elaine Li

B.S. Applied Physics and Mathematics

Elaine Li discovered back in high school that she was good at physics, and her confidence grew as she racked up solid showings at the Physics Olympiad. She never shrank back even though she was often the only girl in the room: “Physics makes sense of just about everything,” she says, explaining her love of the topic.

She soon became determined to pursue her studies in New York, lured by the thoughts of the academic freedom and diversity she would find there. For a time, COVID-19 derailed those plans, although she was able to commence her studies at NYU, thanks to the “Go Local” initiative that allowed her to begin her classes at the campus in Shanghai. (Go Local at NYU Shanghai was designed for undergraduates from China who were not able to obtain a student visa or travel to New York due to pandemic restrictions.)

During her Go Local year at NYU Shanghai, Li had the chance to explore her interests widely through piano duet, chorale, and music history courses. At the same time, she embarked on research in fluid dynamics, the study of the flow of liquids and gasses. Her most recent project combines simulation and experimentation to investigate the lift and drag of a flying robot; her goal is to discover a low drag condition, which may challenge the traditional understanding of drag and shed new light on the fundamental principles of fluid dynamics.

Working in labs across Shanghai and New York and taking several graduate-level courses, she gained knowledge and research skills that will undoubtedly translate to her upcoming doctoral studies. “I am thankful for the cross-school experiences that enabled me to see things from the perspectives of physicists, engineers and mathematicians,” she says.

Besides her research in physics, Li actively engaged in teaching and community outreach for prospective STEM students. “I understand the struggles and doubts we may encounter in pursuing our goals,” she explains. “However, I hope my experiences can serve as an inspiration to all individuals, regardless of their gender or academic field.”

Outside of the classroom, Li could often be found in the lobby of 5 MetroTech, playing the piano, which she has studied since the age of five. “You might not expect this of engineers and scientists, but many of us also have a marked affinity for music,” she says. “A lot of my professors and fellow students are playing, producing, and even composing music. I’m not sure what the connection between those right-brain and left-brain activities is–a biomedical engineer could probably explain–but I’m just grateful that I made so many good friends at NYU Tandon through my playing.”

Madeline Lyons

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Musically, Madeline Lyons had a lot to live up to: her greatgrandfather was Horace Tapscott, a now-renowned pianist and composer who was a major figure in L.A.’s free jazz scene from the 1960s through the ‘90s. She began studying piano at the age of three and soon added violin and voice. By the time she won admission to Alexander Hamilton High School Academy of Music and Performing Arts, she was of two minds; in addition to her artistic interests, she had developed a deep love of math and a fascination with aerospace engineering (thanks in large part to watching rocket launches with her grandmother, a civilian worker at the Los Angeles Air Force Base).

Coming to NYU helped her “connect the dots,” as she puts it. While earning her degree at Tandon in mechanical engineering and serving as engineering director of the school’s rocketry team, co-president of the student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and treasurer of the Space Exploration Society, she was also able to minor at Steinhardt, studying chamber music under Manuel Laufer.

That’s all in addition to working as a tutor within Tandon’s TRIO Scholars Program, an initiative aimed at helping lowincome and first-generation students succeed, and leading summer engineering classes for third- and fourth-graders under the auspices of the National Society of Black Engineers. It’s especially gratifying, she says, when she can spark interest in the many students who “hate math because of the lack of understanding that goes hand in hand with an absence of engaging resources and incentives.”

In the summer of her junior year, Lyons completed an internship at aerospace giant Boeing, where she worked as a quality engineer. She received a return offer and will be working full-time on satellite systems directly after graduation, in addition to starting an aerospace engineering master’s program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in the fall.

“I want to innovate ideas that take us further in space travel and discovery,” she says, “which will ultimately provide better resources and technology that can be used here on Earth.”

Emma Reins

B.S.Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

While growing up in Estes Park, a remote town in Colorado, Emma Reins was spotted by a modeling agent one day at a swim meet. She was then signed at the age of 10 and began her career as a professional model. She started by appearing mostly in catalog photo shoots and other commercial projects, and by the time she was a senior in high school, her career had grown considerably and she was now accepting international jobs, mainly on high-fashion runways.

Despite her career success, she was not content to count on modeling as her primary career. Her mother had worked as a microbiologist in a healthcare setting, and Reins loved watching her at work. While striding the catwalks of Paris and Milan might be considered the pinnacle of glamour to most people, for Reins, nothing sounded more exciting than studying STEM. She was particularly fascinated by disciplines like chemical and biomolecular engineering, which had broad practical applications in a wide variety of sectors.

While she had a clear idea of what she wanted to study, choosing a college posed something of a dilemma, however; she wanted to continue modeling while still studying for a degree in STEM, which meant that a school in New York City (where her agency was based) would be best for her. Luckily, NYU Tandon had a program tailored for her interests, and she started in the fall of 2019.

Once here she threw herself into campus life, serving as a fitness attendant at the gym and as a public health ambassador, educating members of the community and enforcing safety regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of her social media savvy and experience with public appearances, she also took on the role of marketing and publicity chair for the student chapter of the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE).

She was active in the lab, as well: in one notable project, Reins and her team analyzed the spatiotemporal behavior of individuals exiting medical facilities in order to measure the success levels of public health intervention, explore the extent to which touch data could be operationalized in a 3D environment to inform public and institutional policies, and assess the relevance of open data QGIS layers in predicting behaviors and outbreaks.

The worlds of fashion and chemical engineering collided in some respects when she took a course with Adjunct

Professor Peter Tsolis, who works as the vice president of skincare for the iconic beauty brand Estée Lauder. Tsolis belonged to numerous industry associations, and thanks in large part to his recommendation, Reins won a summer internship at Barnet, where she was involved in developing sunscreen and various other products.

Although she now feels torn between seeking a career in the biomedical field or the cosmetics industry, she will not be making an immediate decision. “I’ve been working since I was 10,” she explains. “I’m going to take some time to catch my breath and then choose what comes next for me.”

Simon Chau

M.S. Finance andRisk Engineering

Simon Chau impressed his professors almost from the moment he entered NYU Tandon to study in the Department of Finance and Risk Engineering. By that time, he had worked for several years in the financial industry in his native Hong Kong: as a quantitative research analyst at a hedge fund for three years and as part of the Fixed Income Product Risk team at the Hong Kong Exchange for two.

Despite his successful career, he acknowledged that there were areas in which he needed to upskill. “I ran into questions about machine learning and financial modeling, for example,” he says, “and I knew earning a master’s degree could help.” Taking an online Coursera course offered by Tandon convinced him that coming to Brooklyn would be a worthwhile investment, and that instinct was soon proven correct. “Concepts that had confused me for years became clear in Ken Perry’s machine learning class, and I realized I was really ‘getting it’ when I won top honors at the International Association for Quantitative Finance’s annual competition.”

Chau’s prowess extends from the Exchange to the ring: although back in Hong Kong, he had been an aficionado of the extreme sport known as “tricking”—a fusion of martial arts, gymnastics, and dance moves–when he could not find a group devoted to the pursuit in Brooklyn, he turned instead to boxing.

There’s one game he’s already aced: finding a great job commensurate with his new degree and skills. “I love puzzles, so I actually enjoyed using the Green Book, which is how A Practical Guide To Quantitative Finance Interviews is generally referred to,” he says, “and I’m happy to report that right after graduation I’ll be starting at Deutsche Bank as a quantitative strat.”

Vickram Peter

M.S. CUSP

A portion of Vickram Peter’s academic journey was determined by kismet: it was while accompanying his mother on a business trip to Singapore that he spied a small poster advertising Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He had already fallen in love with computers and engineering back in his native Mumbai, and now he fell equally in love with Singapore–a technologically advanced smart city with a commitment to the digital transformation of health, transportation, government services and business. Attending NTU seemed a natural step.

While earning his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, Peter, also a gifted public speaker and drama student, was exposed to literature, public policy, psychology, and other such topics, and he came to believe that it was imperative to examine the human side of technology. “Just because you are able to do something, doesn’t necessarily mean that you should do it,” he says.

It was after completing his studies at NTU, where he was encouraged to examine life through a more anthropological lens, that he recalled an earlier memory. He had read about and become fascinated by a program at the Center for Urban Science and Progress at King’s College, in London. He now felt ready to explore that option further. Research revealed that the Center was connected to one at NYU Tandon: New York, with its theater scene, complex transit system, and tech ecosystem seemed to present another fated stop on his journey.

At Tandon, Peter is working with the Sounds of New York City (SONYC) project, which aims to measure noise pollution and analyze how it affects residents, and he has served as the president of CUSP’s student body. Moving forward, he plans to focus on making the cities of the future more accessible. “When many people hear the word accessible, they immediately think of physical accessibility for the differently abled,” he explains. “Of course, that’s important, but I think of accessibility in an even broader sense–in terms of access to resources like public transportation. I love a quote that’s been attributed to a Colombian mayor: ‘An advanced city is not one where the poor can get around by car, but one where even the rich use public transportation.’”

Rafaella Saa Rodriguez

B.S. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Rafaella Saa Rodriguez is equally adept in the lab and on the tennis court. Before arriving at NYU Tandon, she played tennis competitively for a dozen years and ranked as a junior professional in international tournaments throughout Latin America and Asia.

Saa Rodriguez, a native of Quito, Ecuador, was in the very first cohort of the Global Leaders and Scholars in STEM (GLASS) program, which highlights incoming Tandon undergraduates with the potential to become global leaders in innovation, technology, research, and entrepreneurship.

One of just four students selected as panel moderators at the 2022 Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, she met world leaders from across four continents, and soon after graduation, she’ll be headed to Switzerland, where she has been accepted into ETH Zurich’s biotechnology master’s program. Inspired by a close family member’s recent battle with breast cancer, her ultimate goal is for her research to help expand access to screenings and treatments in underserved areas of South America and the world.

“I sometimes miss playing tennis,” she says, “but I think I made the right choice in focusing instead on my classes and lab work.”

Dora Sun

M.S. ComputerScience andEngineering

Some clubs thrive on being small and exclusive, but Dora Sun would like hers to be as large as possible. She’s an active member of WiCyS (Women in Cybersecurity), a group founded in 2012 with the help of a National Science Foundation grant and dedicated to uniting aspiring and thriving women cybersecurity professionals to collaborate, share their knowledge, network and mentor.

Sun got her start in the field after earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science and completing a summer Technology Analyst Program at JPMorgan Chase & Co. The financial-services giant extended a return offer for a full-time position in the department of her choice, and she became intrigued by the chance to play a role in safeguarding the data of the firm’s millions of clients.

Soon, however, she wanted to learn even more about the vital, fast-paced world she had joined, and when she read about NYU Tandon’s Cyber Fellows Program, it seemed like a perfect fit. “Cyber Fellows didn’t simply make me a better cybersecurity professional,” she says. “It’s made me a better engineer overall.”

It’s also made her more determined than ever to help get other women involved in the field. “Women make up 39% of the general workforce, but account for just 25% of the jobs in cybersecurity,” she relates. “And with a global shortfall of more than 3 million workers according to most surveys, it’s time we stepped up.”

Kunjan Mehta

M.S. Finance and Risk Engineering

When Kunjan Mehta was selected from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants to embark on a summer research internship at the University of Tokyo, in Kashiwa, she felt some trepidation about the language barriers she would undoubtedly face and the dietary challenges she, as a vegetarian, might encounter. Then 19, she took the leap and left her home in Mumbai, and the experience helped her develop into a global citizen (as well as forcing her to learn to cook).

A Mechanical Engineering major with a specialization in Energy Engineering, she had a good role model when it came to taking chances: her father is a civil engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit who built his own real estate and construction company from the ground up.

Among the opportunities she seized was the chance to earn an advanced degree in the U.S. Fascinated by the underlying mathematics involved, she chose Finance and Risk Engineering. (She had worked after earning her undergraduate degree as a data scientist at a financialtechnology startup, conducting credit risk modeling for potential borrowers in the Indian and Vietnamese markets.)

Once at Tandon, she found role models in her peers, as well as her professors, taking inspiration from hearing about their own professional pathways. The winner of one of the department’s awards for Superior Leadership and Service, she completed internships at Hanover Street Capital (Deutsche Bank’s commercial real estate arm), where she served as part of the Portfolio Management Team, helping identify risk factors in a loan portfolio worth some $20 billion.

“Thinking about my father taking the chance to start his own real estate enterprise and then landing a position in the commercial real estate division of one of the world’s biggest, most respected banks feels like reaching the start of a circular journey,” she says. “It feels like it was meant to be.”

Charlee Cobb

M.S. Biomedical Engineering

After Charlee Cobb earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and got a behind-the-scenes job in news production, she made it her mission to air stories focused on healthcare and issues affecting the elderly. She was motivated by a confluence of factors. Growing up in Southern Ohio, in the western foothills of Appalachia, she had seen firsthand the health problems that plagued financially disadvantaged, rural, Black communities, where conditions like diabetes and hypertension ran rampant–and the disparities in the quality of care available in those communities. On a more personal level, during her college years, her beloved grandmother was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease–a wrenching process to watch.

While Cobb appreciated the chance to bring public attention to important health-related stories, she became discontented. “As a journalist, your job is to see and report, but not to act,” she explains. Seeking to take a more hands-on role that would allow her to make a practical impact, she began studying biomedical engineering at NYU Tandon, where her focus has been on bioinformatics–an interdisciplinary field that employs computation and analysis to capture and interpret biological data, which can then be used to inform drug discovery, personalized treatment protocols, or even community-level healthcare policy.

Instead of being behind the camera, Cobb will soon be behind a lab bench. Last summer she served as an intern at healthcare giant Pfizer, where she analyzed data to generate actionable insights into atrial fibrillation therapies, and she has accepted a full-time post in the company’s rotational program for early-career tech professionals.

Blessing Emole

M.S. Technology, Culture and Society

Blessing Emole’s love for words led her to pursue a career in journalism. Growing up in various countries, including the U.K., U.S., Australia, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Nigeria, she had a diverse cultural background. Her innate curiosity and profound question-asking ability shone through as she earned a bachelor’s degree in Magazine, Newspaper, and Online Journalism from Syracuse University.

However, something was missing. She felt the need to explore a more visually creative path. Deciding to pivot, she took on several internships in the realms of graphic design and marketing design, but it was during her time at the NFL that she discovered her love for User Experience Design.

Her family’s emphasis on education inspired Emole to pursue a master’s degree. When considering graduate programs, Tandon’s Integrated Design & Media (IDM) program immediately caught her eye as the perfect fit for her career interests and goals.

At IDM, Emole delved into everything from coding to AR/VR, but it was accessible design that resonated with her the most. Among her most memorable experiences was leading the UX design initiative for a citizen-science project sponsored by NASA and spearheaded by the Advanced Research in STEAM Accessibility (ARISA) Lab. The Eclipse Soundscapes

Citizen-Science Project (ES: CSP) enabled the Blind/ Low Vision (B/LV) community to collect, listen, interact, and analyse audio recordings from eclipses and analyse the acoustic data to determine how disruptions in light and circadian rhythm may affect ecosystems. The ES: CSP demonstrated that those in the B/LV community can participate in scientific research if interfaces are made accessible.

Emole also completed an internship at Zillow, the online real estate company, and led a VIP team of students in investigating how to make Instagram filters more inclusive and accessible. For her thesis project, Emole centred the voices of Black Women in maternal health and examined their unique experiences with postpartum depression in order to offer up design recommendations for a culturally informed socialsupport application.

Emole worked as IDM’s UX graduate assistant throughout her master’s program. With her passion for accessible design and user experience, she plans to continue her work in the field and might consider teaching one day. Whatever her next experience is, it’s bound to be well-designed.

Anton Cano

B.S. Civil and Urban Engineering

To a layperson, there might not seem to be an obvious connection between sports and civil engineering, but Anton Cano explains that there is. Growing up in the Philippines, Cano was a big fan of soccer. He loved both playing in casual games with his friends and watching televised matches with the national team, Pambansang koponan ng futbol ng Pilipinas, nicknamed the Azkals (or Street Dogs), in homage to their scrappy reputation and dogged determination. That the team had never qualified for the FIFA World Cup had much to do with the lack of infrastructure in the Philippines to support the sport, Cano realized, and if he studied civil engineering, he might one day be able to help rectify that situation.

As a student at NYU Tandon, Cano had little time to keep up with sports, however: winning an American Society of Civil Engineers award as the highest ranking member of the department’s graduating class, as he did, takes a lot of studying, but that’s not a burden when you’re doing something you love and that’s important to you, Cano says. “Plus, I had professors who mentored me and helped keep me on track,” he explains. “I should give a special shout-out here to Professor Walid Aboumoussa, who never hesitated to nudge me if it seemed like I was resting on my laurels.”

With commencement looming, Cano is finding a little more time to indulge in outside activities; he recently took up rock-climbing, and there are always soccer games streaming online. A loyal fan, he has, on occasion, stayed up to watch the Azkals play at 2 a.m. EST. He dreams of one day seeing them compete in the World Cup.

In the meantime, he’ll have to be content with a different dream come true: a job as a structural engineer focusing on building design. After graduation, he’ll be joining WSP, a forward-thinking design and consulting firm specializing in engineering, community planning, environmental, and construction services.

Florentina Sergiou

M.S. TechnologyManagement and Innovation

It’s an undeniably stirring sight enjoyed by tourist and native New Yorker alike: almost 200 flags gently waving on the poles circling the rink at Rockefeller Center. Each spring since 2020, members of the public have been invited to submit a flag design for what the Center describes as a crowdsourced art project, which remains on display for several weeks. This year, for the first time, one of the chosen designs were curated using artificial intelligence, making it the first piece of art at Rockefeller Center to have been created using AI.

The designer was Florentina Sergiou, who used the generative AI platform Midjourney to create a flag depicting a colorful mezze platter in celebration of her Cypriot heritage; she also had a second submission accepted, which highlighted a croissant from her favorite Brooklyn bakery. (In partnership with City Harvest, Rockefeller Center had chosen the culinary theme to bring attention to the nonprofit’s mission of feeding the City’s hungry through food rescue.)

It was not the first time Sergiou’s work could be seen at the rink, directly across from the iconic sculpture of Prometheus: her designs were also chosen when the year’s themes were sustainability and resilience–areas of special interest to her as a Tandon student.

Sergiou, who in 2021 earned her bachelor’s degree in Integrated Design & Media and remained to earn a master’s degree in Management of Technology, has said, “There is not a strict divide between tech skills and artistic skills—it’s very possible to work at the intersection. Tandon has allowed me to merge artistic inquiry with scientific research and technological practice, and I try to leverage that combination in everything I do.”

Currently, she works as the Programming Manager at Wilder World, a Metaverse firm, while also serving as the leader of the Communications Team at Tandon’s

MakerSpace and striving to complete an ambitious capstone project involving the creation of a new resource hub for the Department of Technology, Management, and Innovation.

When she first explored the idea of earning a master’s degree, Sergiou had predicted: “I foresee being able to aid in the development of innovative new designs and processes — something that’s important in most industries — and leverage everything I’ve learned in the process.” She’ll be doing just that at her newest job as the marketing manager at an exciting tech startup!

Jakub Legocki

B.S. / M.S. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

When Jakub Legocki was growing up in Linden, a town in Northern New Jersey, the drive to karate lessons or the shopping center often wended past the headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Merck. What, he wondered, could be happening in those massive buildings, especially the one with its distinctive smokestack? Now, more than a decade later, he knows firsthand.

In 2022 Legocki completed an internship at the company, and following graduation, he will begin a full-time post as an associate scientist in the Bioprocess Drug Substance Commercialization group, where he will work to improve the purification processes for the substances used in antibody drug therapies.

Merck was not, however, his first exposure to bioengineering. Beginning in his sophomore year, he conducted research in Professor Jin Montclare’s eponymous protein-engineering lab, where his projects included exploring the therapeutic and diagnostic capabilities of protein hydrogels as well as increasing the efficiency of pesticide-detoxifying proteins.

While Tandon encourages students to think of the social and ethical impacts of the technology they develop and work with, Legocki has gone a step further: he minored in philosophy. “It’s made me more mindful of how I treat people in my personal life, and it certainly carries over into my professional life,” he says. “As an engineer, I have an obligation to keep issues like sustainability and accessibility in mind, consider the long-term effects of my work, and strive to effectively address the issues the world is facing.”