I have cared for my grandmother full-time since her stroke in 2016. Before that, I also helped her through her hysterectomy and radiation therapy for uterine cancer. Initially, I had more of a support role, relieving my mom for the night at the hospital after the hysterectomy, helping prepare food at home. When grandma had the stroke in the early AM hours that July day, everything changed. She called for me, the panic in her voice instantly waking me up. I found her struggling to stay upright in bed, leaning precariously over the edge, almost falling out had I not reached her in time. From that moment, I have rarely left her side. I've built my life around my grandma and her needs, withdrawing my candidacy from the master's program I'd already been accepted to, switching to an online master's program, finding work online over the years. I've stayed with her through numerous hospitalizations - one week in intensive care followed by three weeks of in-patient rehab, then months of outpatient rehab in 2016; repeat hospitalizations for GI issues caused by the blood thinners she now had to take; each hospitalization setting back her progress and several requiring another stay in in-patient rehab. Over the years, she has gone from complete assistance, to slight independence, and back to complete assistance. My mom handles the more administratively-natured tasks - making doctor appointments, handling her finances, grocery shopping. I have taken care of my grandmother's daily needs almost entirely alone. As her mobility has decreased as she gets older, she now needs two people assisting transfers, but I am still the designated butt-wiper; she feels embarrassed letting anyone else do that part. Our days start around 8am. She wakes up, I help her sit up on the edge of the bed. She combs her hair; I comb the one spot on the left she always misses. We wait for my mom or my brother to help her stand and pivot to the bedside commode, then to the wheelchair once she's done. I wheel her out to the kitchen table and fetch a basin and a cup of water for her to rinse her mouth (try as we might, no one can convince her to put toothpaste to teeth in the morning and then eat). I hold the basin, she holds the cup. I make sure she doesn't tilt the cup too far. I take the basin back to the bathroom, empty it, rinse it out. Measure the contents of the commode, empty it, rinse it out. Get back to the kitchen to take her blood pressure and get started on breakfast. She starts with cereal. I measure 250 milliliters of milk, warm it up and add honey. While she eats, I prepare dried figs; they need to be inspected for mold or insects, then I soak them in warm water to soften. The figs are necessary to help her bowels move. She finishes the cereal; I take the bowl, strain the milk into a cup for her to drink. By this time the egg has finished cooking, and a cream cheese sandwich rounds out her breakfast. By 9:30am, she's ready to go to the bathroom. We call for assistance again to get out of the wheelchair and onto the commode. She does her business, I get her clean, and we get her settled into her recliner afterwards. She likes to "read" in the mornings, though her eyesight is almost completely gone from macular degeneration. Still, she runs her finger over the pages of the Quran for one or two hours. Dementia has convinced her she is completing the whole book every day. I tutor on a schedule built around her bathroom breaks, meal times, and bed time. I study for my second master's degree after she goes to bed. I lost my financial aid eligibility in part because of circumstances relating to my grandma's care, the other part due to my own health issues, all of which caused me to no longer meet satisfactory academic progress. Even though I've been admitted to a new program since then, the GPA and completion rate from the previous program still affect me. I need money to complete my degree, and this scholarship would pay for three of the five classes I have left. I plan to use my degree in AI and machine learning to help solve some of the most pressing issues in health care: access, physician burden, patient communication. Caregiver burnout and the desire of most aging Americans to stay at home. I am not fully certain where the future will take me, but I believe there are many applications in healthcare where AI is not yet fully utilized and where it can fill a need; I aim to fill that need.

As a woman pursuing a master’s degree in engineering with a focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, my interest in women’s health is both deeply personal and professionally driven. I am passionate about personalized medicine, wearable technology, and IoT-based healthcare systems because I know first-hand what it feels like to navigate an uncertain health journey without clear answers, and I believe these technologies will vastly improve patient outcomes, especially for women and minorities. I have struggled with ongoing gastrointestinal issues and experience heavy, painful menstrual cycles that significantly impact my quality of life. Despite multiple consultations, tests, and ongoing care, I still lack a concrete explanation or diagnosis. Like many women, I’ve encountered gaps in care, long wait times, and a lack of data-driven support that could help me and my providers better understand and manage my symptoms. These experiences have motivated me to explore how technology can close those gaps, not only for myself but for millions of women facing similar challenges. Women’s health has long been under-researched, with conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, and chronic pain syndromes often going undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for years. Other non-women specific conditions are also often ignored or misdiagnosed in women, either because symptoms differ in women than in men or just through misogyny. One major issue is the lack of comprehensive, representative data. I believe that personalized medicine, driven by AI and real-world data from wearables, can help bridge this gap. Wearable health devices collect continuous streams of data, including heart rate variability, temperature, sleep quality, stress levels, and more. When analyzed using machine learning, this data can reveal patterns and warning signs that would otherwise go unnoticed in routine care, in addition to providing data for wider research that might otherwise be cost-prohibitive or logistically impossible. My goal is to develop intelligent algorithms and healthcare tools that help detect, monitor, and manage health conditions specific to women in a more proactive and individualized way while helping further understanding of healthcare for everyone, women included. At the same time, I recognize that access to these technologies is often limited by cost, geography, or socioeconomic status. I am committed to the idea that healthcare innovation must be inclusive and equitable. As an engineer, I want to design low-cost, scalable, and culturally-aware technologies that improve access to quality care, particularly for women, but also for people of color, low-income communities, and others who have historically been marginalized by the healthcare system. The democratization of healthcare through technology is another of my long-term goals. While I have not yet conducted formal research in this area, I intend to make women’s health the focus of my long-term career. I hope to collaborate with interdisciplinary teams, from clinicians to behavioral scientists to public health experts, to ensure that the solutions I build are grounded in real-world needs and designed with empathy and inclusivity in mind. I also plan to contribute to open-source tools and datasets that encourage broader participation and transparency in women’s health research. The Women’s Health Research & Innovation Scholarship would provide me with a good deal of the support I need to launch this next phase of my journey. I am eager to learn from other innovators in the field and to contribute meaningfully to the future of women’s healthcare, one that is driven by data, powered by technology, and informed by lived experience.

As a tutor who focuses largely on tutoring STEM subjects, I see many students struggle to understand calculus, and I always tell them the same thing: Calculus isn't actually difficult, but it is different from the math you've done up until this point and it takes some getting used to. Calculus is about functions as a whole and how they behave and change, which makes it well-suited for modelling real-life situations with wide applications in both STEM and non-STEM fields (eg, business). However, in algebra and pre-calculus classes, most of the focus is on solving equations for single variables without much context, making the transition to calculus difficult for many students. The applications of calculus are limitless, and I was lucky enough to have an amazing teacher in high school who underscored the importance of learning calculus and also explained everything in clear detail. Calculus is arguably the foundation of mathematics; it incorporates not only many of the techniques that are essential to further mathematics studies but also provides justifications for much of the techniques and formulas used in algebra and geometry. Calculus also focuses on mathematical reasoning and proofs for the theorems and principles it introduces, something that most math classes neglect. Additionally, many calculus problems require creative thinking and incorporation of prior knowledge, such as when identifying constraints for optimization problems or coming up with equations for related rates problems. These skills are at least equally important, if not more important than, the techniques of calculus themselves, because they enable students to solve wider problems using the tools they learn in class. Of course, the techniques of calculus, from derivatives to integrals and the various methods of evaluating each of these, are a huge part of the reason why calculus is so foundational to STEM fields. Physics employs these techniques for equations of motion, such as the relationships between displacement, velocity, and acceleration (velocity functions are derivatives of displacement functions, acceleration functions are derivatives of velocity function); finding the maximum height an object in projectile motion reaches (find where the velocity function equals zero); and for more advanced applications such as Gauss' Law when calculating electric flux. These basics in turn are used for all areas of engineering from statics to circuits to materials science. Differential equations and linear algebra, both based in calculus, are widely used in computer science and underly newer technologies including AI and machine learning. Software used in fields as varied as animation, geological studies, economics, and business intelligence are powered by calculus and its offshoots. With so many applications, calculus is an integral part of any STEM studies. As a graduate student in engineering with a focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, I am infinitely grateful to my high school and college professors for their calculus classes.