Lauren is a white woman attending a southern university and majoring in mechanical engineering. She took four years of engineering as a high school student, where she studied 3D modeling and mechanics. As part of these classes, she completed a senior thesis and designed a cleaning device for the hand rims of wheelchairs:
We chose to design a cleaning device for wheelchairs because one of my best friends in ‘southern region’ is wheelchair-bound. So, I’d been out at dinner with him and he went to go wash his hands before food. When he came out of the restroom, his hands were dirty again [because] there had been something on the floor that got onto him, so I mentioned it to my ‘team partner’ when we were brainstorming ideas for our project and we were like, “Wow, let’s see if we can do something to help that.”
From Lauren’s first interview
During Lauren’s second year, one of her professors reached out to her about working as a researcher in his lab. As part of her work as a research assistant, Lauren has studied magnetic nanoparticles and has been an author on multiple papers and is tentatively planning to attend graduate school. The image below is a journey map that Lauren created summarizing some of the highs and lows from her third year as an engineering student.
Want to learn more about Lauren’s journey? Check out her tag here (or by clicking the ‘Lauren’ tag below) to see quotes from her interviews over the years.