Meet the Student Assistants of GEPP
Sophia Cooney
Sophia is an undergraduate student in Biomedical Engineering, double minoring in both Spanish and Global Engineering Studies. She is also involved in GEARE, Women in Engineering, and SURGE. As the Student Office Assistant, Sophia helps manage the GEPP social media outlets and Ambassador Program, along with all outreach events for students. Recently, she completed a summer research internship with the University of Bogota in Colombia focusing on fighting skin cancer through the development of infrared laser reactive hydrogels and photothermal therapy; she looks forward to working with them again in the future.
Carolina Gonzalez
Carolina Gonzalez is currently a Ph.D. student in the Industrial Engineering Department. She is interested in the healthcare analytics field; she loves to use statistics for analyzing information and finding patterns.
She is from Colombia, so the experiences of studying abroad and working in GEP2 have been very enriching for her. She has been able to interact with a lot of new cultures, trying to understand them as she starts her path for developing her intercultural skills. In her free time (which is not much), she loves to read, paint and sew. As part of her work in GEP2, she is in charge of the statistical analysis of the IDI collected data in different on-campus and off-campus courses; she is also the TA in the Learning community class (ENGR 103).
Edwin Kpodzro
Edwin is a direct Ph.D. student in the School of Mechanical Engineering with a Design area focus, and a member of the Ecological Sciences and Engineering Interdisciplinary Graduate Program. He is also pursuing the Interdisciplinary Graduate Concentration in Transformational Innovation and Design.
As a founding member of the Graduate Researchers for International Development (GRID) student organization, Edwin’s desire is to see academic research and innovation translated into impactful real-world solutions through design that is participatory and interdisciplinary. His personal research work involves strategic design and development of solutions to global grand challenges such as poverty and low economic development, energy and resource efficiency, and feeding the world sustainably.
He has been recognized for his work by Bayer Crop Science as one of the 100 youth leaders and agricultural change-makers at the 2021 Youth Ag Summit (YAS) and the first-ever virtual YAS University.
Edwin’s responsibilities as a Graduate Research Assistant with GEPP include providing support for various engineering study abroad and international recruitment programs and partnerships, the annual Innovation for International Development (I2D) Expo hosted by the Shah Family Global Innovation Lab, and associated classes in the Global Engineering Learning Community.