Jacob Daniel Dumas Memorial Jewish Scholarship

Growing up, my father told me stories of his experiences with poverty as he and his family emigrated from Iraq to the state of Israel with nothing but a few suitcases. My father was a very bright child, but shared how he could never study while growing up because he had no school supplies or even any food to fill his stomach. In college, he had to drop out because he could not keep up with his schoolwork as well as work to support himself. Spending time with my family has taught me resilience and optimism in the face of adversity, and I will never forget how powerful higher education is in transforming lives. Because of my heritage, I am continuously educating myself on connections of faith, ethnicity, and social justice as a student doctor at Emory University School of Medicine. As the president of the Jewish Medical Student Organization at Emory (Medical Mensches), I serve as a support system and advocate for Jewish medical school students. During our Genetics course this semester, one professor made insensitive comments surrounding the genetic conditions associated with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Unable to remain silent, I was able to speak to the entire class about the history of discrimination and persecution that resulted in less genetic diversity and increased risks of genetic conditions. Afterwards, I collaborated with our professors to rewrite parts of the curriculum to more accurately educate future physicians around Jewish heritage and medical risks. When our school administration scheduled quizzes on Yom Kippur, I wrote a petition letter to our deans to respect our observations. This fortunately resulted in flexible accommodations for observing students. As a marginalized religious and ethnic identity, it is my obligation to speak for justice for others. As a future physician, guided by my experiences and Jewish values, I plan to advocate for my patients’ care. Geriatric medicine and caring for older adults has been a passion of mine for many years. The summer after my first year of college, I watched my grandfather lose his ability to walk, speak, and swallow to Parkinson’s Disease before passing at the age of 93. This experience helped me understand the importance of both caring for vulnerable individuals in times of need while also progressing scientific advancement to treat degenerative conditions. Right now, I am spearheading a clinical research project on Parkinson’s Disease to find potential connections between specific biomarkers, disease progression, and genetic heritage. I hope to contribute to greater scientific knowledge around Parkinson’s Disease and make a positive impact for patients like my grandfather. Jewish values and community have shaped who I am and what kind of physician I hope to become: an advocate for others, a compassionate caregiver, and a scientific investigator able to answer challenging questions in medicine. I still have much to learn, but I am dedicated to creating positive change for my patients.

Think about it! You can't. The observable universe is 93 billion light-years wide—a distance the human brain cannot perceive nor imagine. The idea that we, mankind, can spend the rest of our time as a species on Earth is both foolish and unreasonable. This idea is what inspires me to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering, not because I believe that life on Earth is infinitely sustainable, but because I know that our expansion and growth as a species relies on greater space exploration and colonization. While I hold little interest in becoming an astronaut and exploring space myself, I wish to help facilitate the space exploration that takes place during my lifetime to the best of my ability. Through global warming and climate change, among other problems surrounding our extended stay on our home planet, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we need to place greater importance on space exploration in the coming years. With contemporary research displaying severe potential future consequences, the time mankind has left on Earth only seems to decrease. Outside of this core motivation, I also find interest in the STEM field because I have always enjoyed solving problems, often with unique and innovative solutions, and a job in the engineering field allows me to do just that. As the captain of my school's robotics team, I have experience dealing with a significant amount of problems from an engineering standpoint, as we have had numerous problems every school year participating in our state's First Tech Challenge robotics competition. Often lots of problems are met with complaints and excuses from others, but I like to meet problems with solutions. I aspire to be one of the engineers responsible for sending men to the moon to stay, sending a probe to Mars, or even the next major telescope into orbit. By helping to achieve any of the monumental achievements listed above, I can leave a lasting impact on not only the world but on all of humankind, present and future. Working for NASA or another space agency such as SpaceX or Blue Origin is a realistic and long-standing dream of mine that I am determined and willing to put in the work to achieve. For my next step, I intend to attend a great college where I can earn at least a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering before applying for a job at NASA and working my way up the ladder as an aerospace engineer.

The first two people that have influenced my love of STEM and my pursuit of a STEM-focused career are my parents. Even when I was much younger, they would always encourage me to both exceed expectations set by everyone around me and to continue learning about things that interest me, even if they aren't always what's being taught in school. This encouragement continued throughout my life with constant educational nourishment, with trivia, documentaries, and eventually, in high school, helping me take extra classes that I found interesting over the summer, like Forensic Science. The second thing that pushed me into a STEM focus was when we were introduced to magnet programs in the 8th grade, and the presenters were biased about female students enrolling in the engineering-focused path. This clear dismissal cemented my going through with enrolling in my current STEM classes. The next person to influence me in STEM is my engineering teacher at Lassiter. He is a great teacher and can make the most boring, time-consuming, and tedious parts of the class easy to get through and interesting because of his personal experiences with the topic and how much he wants the students in his class to learn and do well. Each year in engineering has a different focus, like Introduction to Engineering, The Principles of Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and Capstone Research. I think the time I decided what I wanted to study was at the beginning of my junior year engineering class, Aerospace Engineering. After hearing about what my teacher did in this field as a Navy Pilot, creating and testing airfoils in addition to other hands-on assignments in class, and diving deep into the history and technology behind the Aerospace Engineering field, I kept going home and doing extra research to come back with more questions to continue with discussions like I had never done in any of my classes before which lead me to the quite obvious choice at this point to continue with something that I love to learn. The final person to influence my decision to pursue STEM in college and as a career was my junior-year math teacher. Talking to her and hearing about the long winding path she took to become a math teacher and getting her advice on how I should choose a major, not because it's the best in general but because it's the best for me and my future.

My passion for space inspired me to pursue a STEM degree. Since I was a little kid, I have loved shooting off model rockets with my Dad, watching the stars at night, and using my Grandpa's telescope to look for the planets. I loved going to the aviation museums in New York and Florida and Kennedy Space Center; meeting real-life astronauts was one of my favorite memories. As a future engineer, my work will help benefit life on earth. Engineers help improve life worldwide, solve complex problems, create new technologies, and conduct research. My family has many engineers, including mechanical and software engineers, so since I was a little kid, I have been able to learn from them and grow my passion for STEM. Learning how to code from my uncle, develop simple games, and also learn how to think critically and be creative. I also love using the computer to create, design, and experiment to make rocket models. I am an avid CAD enthusiast and CREO, Matlab, and Fusion360. Rockets and planes are so fascinating to me, and I want to help grow the technology in those industries and help humans inhabit other planets. The space industry is so exciting right now, especially with all the private companies coming in and helping NASA. It is so refreshing to see new life going into this industry, and the private companies bring the funding and excitement of the public that brings momentum to return us to the moon and beyond. It was so upsetting as a little kid to see the space shuttle program retire since I loved that program so much, and to see the technology and developments coming now is so exhilarating. Now that the excitement has come back, especially the money, it will make the space industry grow even faster. I dream of being one of the engineers that can say that I helped return humans to the moon, helped create the rocket that brought us there, and then established a habitable space for humans. However, there will be many problems. One, we need to find more renewable resources, reduce space flight costs, and ensure the rockets are reliable and reusable. As a future engineer, I know it is crucial to ensure our work is ethical and can improve life here on earth without too many negatives. My goal as an Aerospace Engineer is to first work for NASA since it has been a dream of mine to work there since I was a young kid. Then, I want to go to the private sector since it will have lots of funding and help increase the public's interest in space flight, allowing me to be more creative and flexible. I have always been highly competitive, driven, and motivated, and it will be easy to accomplish my goals. Engineering is my passion, and I will not allow anyone or anything to get in my way.

Spite is a wonderful motivator. In fifth grade, every other Friday afternoon was to be dedicated to a STEM-themed project for every fifth-grade class. The first week we chucked eggs off the fire escape and in the second, we would test our paper and duct-tape towers against a leaf blower. My math and science education did not combine creativity with math or science until this point. Suffice it to say my mind was blown. Though I loved the spectacle, I also liked finally understanding the bridge between the numbers and the product. I knew butterflies were born from caterpillars but I finally knew about the chrysalis. These afternoons were the highlights of my week. It was all I ever wanted to talk about. Come October, five boys decided to engage in a food fight. Despite no one else getting involved, my teacher permanently ended STEM days for our entire class as punishment. The privilege of recess was also revoked that day for my protests. Later that afternoon, I decided that if my teacher was not going to continue STEM days, I would. Frankly, I cared more about going against my teacher than the projects themselves in the beginning. I had a friend tell me what she did in class in as much detail as a fifth grader can muster. Then, I would do my best to recreate it with what I could find in the kitchen and it worked! I roped my friends into it and we would make catapults from popsicle sticks and towers out of spaghetti noodles. My interest in engineering design was born here. The second spark arrived in middle school. A group of female nuclear engineers from NC State happened to be visiting my classroom and now I had a name for what I wanted to do. I wanted to study nuclear for years after and if I ever fall out of love with biomanufacturing, I hope to use my chemical engineering degree to work in nuclear. At the very least, I have those women to thank when it comes to how I ended up at NC State. In high school, I needed volunteer hours so I joined Kids Are Scientists Too, a branch of the science club dedicated to elementary STEM outreach. Primarily, we created lesson plans and led experiments to expose kids to the more exciting aspects of STEM. One year later I was managing the organization and conducting the tornado-in-a-bottle experiment with the class. That was one of the projects I recreated back in fifth grade, and it was incredibly cathartic to be running it in my former fifth-grade classroom. KAST helped me realize I loved teaching too and I want to become a professor one day. I discovered biomanufacturing in college but first, we must briefly return to fifth grade. I used to say that I wanted to be a pharmacist but stopped when I found out they are not responsible for making the medicine. Fall of freshman year I attended a random information session about the biomanufacturing program and discovered my school has a whole department that at its most oversimplified, is about making medicine. My inner child took control and I changed my intended major that night and I have not looked back since!

One question that is always in the back of my mind as the seasons change is: what are we going to do about the environment? Already we can clearly see the effects of climate change by turning on the news. Hurricane season starts earlier each year with more ferocity; more fires are burning across the Western coast than in decades. This is just one of the reasons I want to pursue a degree in STEM. Working in STEM is about problem solving and taking the next step in technological advancement to make living in this world easier. I may not be responsible for the problems that affect our world now, but I do want to be part of the solution. As a future engineer, I can actually do something for the environment, because getting an engineering degree will give me the tools to start building the solution. Not everybody has that opportunity. I have been lucky thus far. I come from a family of multiple engineers, so I was exposed to the profession that encourages curious minds and hands. It is not unusual now, or when I was young, for me to be sitting my my dad in his workshop asking why he was doing something, like replacing brake pads, or how something worked, like a carburetor. My first interest in engineering started off with old cars and how they worked since it was common for me to go to car shows. Eventually attending car shows turned into air shows, and that's when my love for airplanes, how they worked, and flying started. One of my favorite planes is the Lockheed SR-71, an intelligence plane capable of flying over Mach 3. It looks so different from the regular commercial passenger jet, that I wanted to find out why it could still fly. Ever since learning the basics of wing design and aerodynamics, I’ve wanted to experiment with more effective plane designs. Looking through the history of planes, the variety of different designs over time is fascinating, but lately it seems like commercial airplane design has stagnated with very few new breakthroughs. Due to the apparent stagnation in the outer design of airplanes and the climate crisis, I decided that I wanted to solve a couple problems at once. My dream is to design a supersonic passenger airplane that will cut down on the time people spend in the air traveling and use less fuel, so not as many emissions are created through air travel. However, this is going to be a long process as not only do I need to design, build, and test the plane, it is likely I will have to advocate for airports to change or accommodate for an irregular airplane design. Once I established what I wanted to accomplish in the aerospace industry to myself, there is very little that will stop me from doing everything in my power to achieve my goal. Growing up in a competitive family that valued education so heavily has encouraged my drive to always complete what I said I would do. I want to be a part of the generation of STEM workers that leaves the Earth a better place than it is at the time I write this, which I hope my goal with contribute to.