I used to think selflessness had to look dramatic, like giving away the last thing you had or making a sacrifice everyone could see. I have had small moments where I shared food even when my own stomach was grumbling, but I have also been blessed never to know the kind of suffering where I had to give away my last meal or my last shirt. Because of that, I think selflessness in my life has looked different. It has been about choosing patience, inclusion, and responsibility when it would have been easier to choose comfort. One memory that stays with me happened during a STEM activity with younger students. Around that time, one of my friends was always inviting me after school to try a new boba place, go shopping, or do something fun after a long day. I wanted to go. I love those small, happy moments with friends, especially when school is stressful. But during one workshop, there was a student who was clearly seeking attention. He kept interrupting, distracting other students, and making it difficult for the group to stay focused. The easy response would have been to ask him to leave or to let someone else deal with him. Instead, I tried to see past the disruption. I wondered if he was acting out because he was bored, embarrassed, or afraid he would not understand the activity. Rather than treating him like a problem, I gave him a job. I asked him to help pass out materials, test part of the activity, and show another student what he had figured out. The change was not instant, but it was real. Once he felt useful, he became less disruptive. He still needed redirection, but he also started participating. That moment taught me that sometimes helping someone in need does not look like rescuing them from obvious hardship. Sometimes it means noticing that a difficult person may still need belonging. I have tried to bring that same approach to my work in STEM. Through FIRST Robotics with the Janksters, Team 1967, I learned mechanical design, fabrication, teamwork, and perseverance. Robotics gave me confidence, but it also showed me how intimidating technical spaces can feel for students who are new. I have tried to make those spaces more welcoming by explaining concepts, encouraging questions, and reminding younger students that engineering is not about being perfect right away. It is about testing, failing, adjusting, and trying again. As president of Science Olympiad, I also learned that leadership is a form of service. It meant helping organize preparation, encouraging participation, and paying attention to teammates who were quietly struggling. Beyond school, I helped organize STEM workshops for children at public libraries because I believe access matters. A child who realizes “I can do this” may carry that confidence into future classes, clubs, or careers. Michael Rudometkin’s legacy reminds me that a meaningful life is measured not only by achievement, but by how we show up for other people. I hope to carry that spirit into bioengineering, where I want to design tools that improve mobility, healing, and quality of life. To me, selflessness means using whatever skills, patience, and opportunities I have to help someone else move forward, especially when it would be easier to walk away.

Leadership through service is important because it changes both people at the same time: the person being helped and the person doing the helping. I learned that lesson most clearly through robotics. For the past several years, I have volunteered as a mentor with the Pyrobotics program at Holy Family School, helping middle school students learn engineering concepts like CAD design, drivetrain basics, gear ratios, pneumatics, and Java programming. Many of the students came in curious but unsure of themselves. Some were excited to build but nervous about using tools. Others assumed programming would be too hard before they even tried it. My role was not just to explain the technical steps. It was to make the room feel safe enough for them to ask questions, make mistakes, and try again. One of the events I helped organize was a STEM workshop for younger students through Science Olympiad. As president of my high school’s Science Olympiad Club, I helped plan activities for children ages 8 to 12, organize materials, and make sure the lessons were hands-on instead of just lectures. We wanted students to feel science, not just hear about it. That meant creating activities where they could build, test, observe, and laugh when something did not work the first time. Watching younger students discover that they could solve a problem with their own hands reminded me why I love STEM in the first place. I have also volunteered with Martha’s Kitchen and Our City Forest. Those experiences were different from robotics, but they taught me the same lesson in another way. Service is not always about having a title or being the loudest person in the room. Sometimes it is preparing meals, planting trees, carrying supplies, cleaning up, or doing small tasks that make someone else’s day easier. Community work taught me humility. It showed me that leadership is not about being above other people. It is about being willing to stand beside them and do the work. To me, leadership through service means paying attention to what people actually need. In robotics mentoring, that might mean slowing down and explaining a concept three different ways. In a community volunteer event, it might mean noticing that someone needs help before they ask. As an organizer, it means planning ahead so others can participate successfully. As a volunteer, it means showing up ready to do whatever is useful, even if it is not glamorous. These experiences have shaped the kind of engineer and person I want to become. I plan to study bioengineering, and I am especially interested in creating practical medical technologies that can help communities with fewer resources. Service has taught me that good solutions cannot be designed from a distance. You have to listen first. You have to understand the people you hope to serve. The best leaders I have met are not the ones who simply give instructions. They are the ones who make other people feel capable. That is the kind of leader I try to be, whether I am helping a middle school student understand gear ratios, organizing a STEM activity, or volunteering in my community. Leadership through service matters because it turns ambition outward. It asks not just, “What can I achieve?” but “Who can I help along the way?”

I have always liked the part of a project where something does not work yet. That may sound strange, but to me, that is where the most interesting thinking happens. A finished project can be impressive, but a broken one asks questions. Why is this failing? What force did we forget? What part is weaker than it looks? What can we change with the materials we already have? One of the clearest examples happened through my high school FIRST Robotics team. Before a competition, our robot’s intake mechanism was not working reliably. The design looked fine in theory, but under real pressure it struggled to grip and move game pieces the way we needed it to. At that point, there was no perfect solution waiting for us. We had limited time, limited materials, and a robot that had to be competition-ready. I helped troubleshoot the problem by looking at the mechanical stress points, the angle of the intake, and how the parts behaved when the robot moved at full speed. We tested, adjusted, failed, and adjusted again. Eventually, we redesigned the mechanism using the tools and materials available to us. It was not the fanciest version we could have imagined, but it worked. More importantly, it taught me that creativity is not always about making something beautiful from the start. Sometimes creativity is making something useful when the situation is messy and the clock is against you. That experience changed how I think about engineering. It made me realize that problem-solving is not just technical. It is also emotional. You have to stay calm when a design fails. You have to listen to teammates. You have to let go of an idea you liked if the evidence shows it is not working. You have to keep trying when the first answer is wrong. If I had the money and resources to create something larger, I would build low-cost diagnostic tools for communities that do not have easy access to hospitals, labs, or expensive medical equipment. My goal would be to develop paper-based test strips for infectious diseases that are affordable, portable, and easy to use. Many people around the world do not just need better medical technology. They need medical technology that can reach them where they are. My plan would begin with research into diseases where early detection makes the biggest difference, especially in areas with limited refrigeration, electricity, or transportation. I would work with bioengineering mentors, public health experts, and local clinics to understand what a useful diagnostic tool would actually need to do in the field. Then I would help design a paper-based test that uses fluidics and molecular markers to show results quickly, similar to how some rapid tests work now, but built to be lower cost and easier to distribute. The next step would be testing. I would want to compare the tool against existing diagnostics, improve accuracy, and make sure the instructions are clear for people without medical training. I would also focus on packaging, storage, and language access because a good invention is not helpful if people cannot understand or trust it. To me, the best solutions are not always the most complicated ones. Sometimes the most powerful invention is small, affordable, and easy to use. FIRST Robotics taught me how to build under pressure. Bioengineering is where I hope to turn that mindset toward problems that affect human health. I want to create things that do more than work. I want to create things that matter.

Technology became real to me the first time I watched something I helped build respond to the world. Before that, I thought of technology mostly as screens, apps, and devices other people designed. Then I joined my high school’s FIRST Robotics team, and I began to understand that technology is not magic. It is a series of choices. A gear ratio changes how much force a robot can apply. A sensor tells the system where it is. A few lines of Java can turn a pile of metal, motors, wires, and pneumatics into something that moves with purpose. I am now an incoming Bioengineering student at UC Berkeley, and what interests me most about technology is how it can connect physical systems, software, and human needs. I am fascinated by the point where code meets the real world. A program that controls a robot arm is not just an assignment on a screen. It affects whether the arm moves smoothly, whether a mechanism holds under pressure, and whether the whole system succeeds or fails. That same idea is what draws me toward bioengineering, medical devices, and eventually technologies that can improve human health. My strongest technology experience has come through robotics. As a four-year member of the Janksters Robotics Team, I worked on the build and design side, helping create mechanical systems for competition robots. I learned CAD, fabrication, drilling, riveting, sawing, pneumatics, sensors, encoders, and motor controllers. I also programmed robot controls in Java, integrating hardware and software into one working system. Robotics taught me that technology requires both creativity and discipline. It also taught me that failure is part of the process. Mechanisms break. Code does not always behave the way you expect. A design that looks good on paper may not survive the stress of competition. Each problem forced me to test, adjust, and try again. I have also had the chance to share those skills with younger students as a volunteer mentor for Pyrobotics at Holy Family School. Teaching middle school students about CAD, gear ratios, pneumatics, and Java programming helped me become more confident in my own understanding. It is one thing to know how something works. It is another thing to explain it clearly to someone who is just beginning. Mentoring showed me that access matters. A student’s interest in technology can begin with one patient explanation, one successful build, or one moment when they realize they are capable of solving a hard problem. Outside of robotics, I explored information technology through the Congressional App Challenge, where I received a certificate in 2022. That experience helped me see software as a tool for communication and problem-solving, not just coding for its own sake. I have also studied artificial intelligence through Stanford AI Camp and materials science through a Drexel University summer program. Together, these experiences shaped the way I see technology: as something that becomes most powerful when it is connected across fields. My background is rooted in building, testing, teaching, and learning. What excites me about the technology field is that it gives people a way to turn ideas into systems that can actually help others. I want to keep developing those skills at Berkeley and use them to create tools that are practical, thoughtful, and useful in the real world.

To many, STEM feels like a set of fixed rules: the force of gravity, the exact balance of a chemical reaction, the rigid logic of a computer chip. But as a minority woman who has spent four intense years inside FIRST Robotics, I see something different. I see a living, breathing toolkit. STEM gives us the power to rebuild what breaks. A single line of code or a smarter gear design can lift entire communities out of hardship. That is not abstract to me. That is personal. I grew up as a minority student in a low-income household. The global challenges this scholarship asks about were not textbook problems. They were my Tuesday. Limited resources. No family connections in engineering. The cost of a graphing calculator felt like a mountain. Walking into a room full of engineers as the only girl of color felt like a wall. But I learned to treat every obstacle as my first engineering problem: how to get the most out of a system with very little to work with. I solved it by making education a team sport. I found mentors. I earned a 5 on AP Calculus AB. I dove into Pyrobotics FTC and FRC teams. Adversity became a stress test for my ambition. I did not just want to survive STEM. I wanted to lead it. That is why I now mentor at Holy Family and St. Martin of Tours. I teach younger students that their background is not a barrier. It is their secret weapon. I also run STEM and Chemistry Olympiad workshops at local libraries, helping kids who, like me, rarely see themselves in textbooks. I do not just want to be a researcher. I want to be a bridge. My future impact will be socially conscious innovation. I will use my degree to build technology for underserved urban areas, starting with my own community in San Jose. That could mean improving environmental health in our city forests or creating affordable educational tools. I want the next generation to fight less than I did for a seat at the table. Investing in my education is investing in a leader who knows both the precision of a lab and the reality of a neighborhood. I have the technical foundation from robotics and advanced math. I have the lived experience of overcoming systemic barriers. My goal is simple: make STEM excellence a platform for everyone, not a privilege for a few. With the Emerging Leaders in STEM Scholarship, I will keep proving that the most powerful impact a leader can make is to leave the door wide open for those coming next.

In FIRST Robotics, hardship can be measured in millimeters, milliseconds, and the quiet panic of a robot that stops working two days before competition. For four years, I have lived in that world through FRC and FTC. I have learned CAD, torque calculations, wiring, fabrication, programming, and the kind of teamwork that happens when everyone is tired, the robot is half-working, and the deadline does not care. But my greatest achievement in robotics was not a trophy or a blue banner. It was learning how to use engineering when life felt just as complicated as the robot. During my junior year, our team faced a major failure forty-eight hours before a regional competition. A sensor system used for autonomous navigation began shorting intermittently. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not. Every time we thought we had fixed it, the robot proved us wrong. At the same time, my family was navigating financial instability. As a lower-income student, I felt pressure that was hard to explain. I was trying to hold my grades, robotics responsibilities, college dreams, and family stress all at once. For a while, I felt like that robot: overloaded, glitching, and one loose wire away from shutting down. So I did what robotics taught me to do. I stopped trying to fix everything at once. On the robot, I helped isolate the problem piece by piece. We checked the wiring harness, tested connections with a multimeter, and separated what we knew from what we assumed. The first fix failed. So did the second. So did the third. But each failure gave us more information. That became my strategy outside robotics too. I broke my own situation into smaller parts. What could I control today? What needed to be finished first? Who could I ask for help? When you are a first-generation student, asking for help can feel like admitting you do not belong. Robotics taught me the opposite. Nobody builds the whole robot alone. One person CADs the arm. One wires the system. One writes the code. One checks the math. The whole team makes it move. That lesson changed how I mentor. For two years I mentored robotics students at St. Martin of Tours School, helping elementary and middle schoolers build and program competition robots. For two more years I continued at Holy Family School with the Pyrobotics FTC and FRC teams, leading workshops and one-on-one coaching. Mentoring taught me that STEM confidence is built one small success at a time. A student afraid to touch the robot becomes the student tightening bolts. The student who says "I'm bad at coding" becomes the one debugging a program. I know that feeling because robotics did the same thing for me. By competition day, our robot did not just move. It performed. We had traced the fault, repaired the system, and made it to the field. Resilience is not just pushing through. It is diagnosing the problem, adapting the design, and trusting the people beside you. Mark Caldwell's career in electrical engineering and robotic integration reminds me that engineering is not only about machines. It is about connecting systems, solving hard problems, and building things that work reliably in the real world. My background is not a weakness in my story. It is part of my design. As I pursue a STEAM degree, I carry the skills of a builder and the heart of a mentor. Robotics taught me that when something fails, you do not walk away. You test. You learn. You rebuild. And then you help the whole team move forward.

The Language of Change: Why Calculus is the Pulse of STEM: Many students view calculus as a looming wall—a formidable barrier of limits, derivatives, and integrals designed to gatekeep the STEM world. But having stood on both sides of that wall, I’ve come to see calculus differently. To me, calculus isn't a barrier; it’s the heartbeat of the physical world. It is the mathematical study of change, and in the rapidly evolving landscape of STEM, change is the only constant we have. My journey with calculus has been one of rigorous discipline and profound "aha" moments. Achieving a 5 on my AP Calculus AB exam wasn't just about mastering a scoring rubric; it was about learning to see the world in high definition. As I prepare for the Calculus BC exam this month, I am diving deeper into the elegant complexity of Taylor series and polar coordinates. These aren't just abstract symbols on a page—they are the blueprints for the future. In the STEM field, calculus is the bridge between a static idea and a functioning reality. Whether it is a civil engineer calculating the fluctuating stress loads on a bridge or an information security analyst modeling the rate at which a new threat might propagate through a network, the "instantaneous rate of change" is the data point that matters most. Calculus allows us to move beyond the "what is" and accurately predict the "what will be." Beyond its technical utility, calculus is important because it demands a specific kind of mental toughness. It requires the "Boldest" version of a student—one who is willing to wrestle with a single problem for hours until the logic clicks. This grit is the same trait needed to thrive in a STEM career. In my robotics mentorship at Holy Family and St. Martin of Tours, I often tell my students that coding a robot to move is algebra, but optimizing that robot to navigate a dynamic environment with precision is where the spirit of calculus lives. For a woman in STEM, mastering calculus is also an act of empowerment. It provides a universal language that commands respect in any lab or boardroom. My ambition is to use this language to solve real-world problems, from environmental sustainability to technological infrastructure. Calculus is the "bold" choice because it is difficult, and it is the "essential" choice because it is the only way to truly quantify the motion of our universe. By relieving the financial burden of tuition, this scholarship allows students like me to stop worrying about the cost of the degree and start focusing on the derivatives of our impact. I am ready to take the variables of my education and integrate them into a career that moves the world forward.

In the early morning mist of the San Jose nurseries, before the city hums to life, there is a profound stillness that demands a certain kind of person to break it. It requires someone who doesn't just show up, but someone who arrives with the intent to serve. In my time volunteering with Our City Forest, an urban forestry and environmental education non-profit, I discovered that the most impactful leadership isn't found in a loud voice, but in the quiet, steady dedication of being the first to pick up a shovel and the last to set it down. This ethos of "leading from the dirt up" is where my path met the legacy of Jorge Campos. Affectionately known as Don Jorge, Jorge Campos was a man whose work ethic was a form of poetry. He wasn't just a worker; he was a steward of kindness who anticipated needs before they were spoken. At Our City Forest, I strive to embody that same spirit of "anticipatory service." During our community planting events, my role as a Team Leader involves more than just teaching residents how to properly mulch a sapling. It involves noticing the neighbor who wants to help but lacks the physical strength, and quietly adjusting our workflow so they can participate by watering, ensuring everyone feels valued. This commitment to fostering unity extends beyond the nursery into every facet of my life. As a robotics mentor with the Pyrobotics FTC and FRC teams at Holy Family School and formerly at St. Martin of Tours School, I’ve learned that technical skill is secondary to encouragement. Whether I am guiding an elementary student through their first line of code or providing one-on-one coaching for complex builds, I aim to lead with the same patience and quick wit Don Jorge was known for. I’ve seen how a supportive environment can transform a frustrated student into a confident innovator. Leadership, to me, is about creating inclusive spaces for growth. In my capacity as President of the Science Olympiad and Chemistry Olympiad clubs, I organize hands-on workshops at local public libraries for children ages eight to twelve. These sessions aren't just about chemistry; they are about making science accessible and joyful for the next generation. This same drive for service leads me to Martha’s Kitchen, where I volunteer for the food-insecure community in San Jose, and to the Notre Dame peer tutoring program, where I support fellow students in mastering math and science. Don Jorge was famous for making everyone feel welcome with a warm smile and a joke. I have learned that in community service—whether in a library, a soup kitchen, or a nursery—positivity is the most vital tool we have. These experiences have reshaped my personal growth, teaching me that leadership is a position of humility rather than authority. Looking toward the future, my aspirations are firmly planted in community advocacy. I want to build a career where "extra effort" is common practice and kindness is the default. Receiving the Jorge Campos Memorial Scholarship would honor a commitment to service that I intend to carry for a lifetime, ensuring that, like the trees I plant, my legacy provides shade and comfort for others.

There is a specific kind of silence that follows a great loss—a silence that can either swallow your ambition or become the quiet workspace where you rebuild your life. When I read about the life of Julie Adams, I didn’t just see a list of accolades or a tragic date in April. I saw the story of a woman who understood that math and science are not just subjects in a textbook; they are the tools we use to bring order to a chaotic world. As a young woman standing at the threshold of my own career in STEM, I am driven by that same belief: that through science and technology, we can turn our personal hardships into a universal help. My passion for my degree doesn’t stem from a purely academic interest. It comes from the realization that every great advancement in our history began with someone who refused to let their circumstances define their potential. Like Julie, who spent a decade ensuring her students had the opportunities to succeed, I have been shaped by the mentors who saw a spark in me when I was struggling to find my own light.I am pursuing a degree in Bioengineering because I want to be part of the solution for the "unexpected." In life, we often face variables we cannot control—illness, loss, and systemic barriers. But in STEM, we are trained to look at a problem and ask, "How can I solve this?" Whether it is developing better medical diagnostic tools to prevent tragedies like amniotic fluid embolisms or engineering sustainable solutions for underserved communities, my goal is to use my education as a shield for others. Julie Adams was particularly passionate about bringing young women into STEM, and I understand why. For too long, these fields have lacked the unique perspective that comes from a woman’s drive and empathy. To be a woman in STEM is to be a pioneer in a room that wasn’t always built for you. My ambition is fueled by the desire to honor the path Julie paved. I want to graduate not just with a diploma, but with the ability to mentor the next generation of girls, showing them that their curiosity is a superpower. Eric Adams and his family have turned a moment of profound heartbreak into a beacon of hope for students like me. That act of turning "why me?" into "what can I do for others?" is the ultimate expression of the scientific spirit. It is the same spirit I intend to carry into my labs, my lectures, and eventually, my career. I am passionate about this degree because I believe that through STEM, we can solve the world's most difficult equations—including the ones that involve human suffering. I have the drive to work through the late-night labs and the difficult theorems because I know that my success is a way to keep the memory of dedicated educators like Julie Adams alive. I am not just pursuing a degree; I am pursuing the chance to make the "impossible" predictable, and the "unexpected" preventable.

The click of a solenoid and the hum of a drivetrain have been the soundtrack of my life for four years. Through FIRST Robotics, I didn’t just learn to build machines; I learned that technology is a language of empowerment. However, as an African American woman in STEM, I’ve often noticed I am one of the few voices speaking it. My mission is to bridge this gap, using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) to transform how we serve our communities and mentor the next generation. My hands-on journey with AI began in the heat of the FRC competition season. While many see robotics as purely mechanical, I became fascinated by the "brain" of the bot. I spearheaded the integration of a vision-processing system using Limelight and custom Python scripts to automate target acquisition. By implementing a basic machine learning model for object detection, I enabled our robot to distinguish between game pieces and field debris in real-time. This wasn't just about winning a match; it was about the thrill of seeing code "learn" to navigate a complex environment. Beyond the competition field, I applied these skills to address accessibility. During my junior year, I developed a prototype mobile application designed for peer tutors at Notre Dame. The app used a lightweight ML algorithm to analyze student performance data, identifying specific "struggle zones" in calculus and physics. By predicting where a peer might stumble before they even took a test, the app allowed tutors to provide proactive, personalized support. This project taught me that AI is most powerful when it amplifies human empathy and intelligence. My commitment to STEM is inseparable from my commitment to my community. As President of the Science and Chemistry Olympiad clubs, I’ve organized workshops at local libraries, introducing eight-year-olds to the magic of molecules. At Holy Family and St. Martin of Tours, I mentor Pyrobotics FTC teams, ensuring that younger students—especially those from underrepresented backgrounds—see a leader who looks like them. Whether I am planting trees with Our City Forest or serving meals at Martha’s Kitchen, I see the same thing: systems that could be made more equitable through smarter technology. I foresee making an impact in the AI/ML field by developing "Tech for Good" initiatives that prioritize social equity. My goal is to study Computer Science with a focus on Algorithmic Fairness. We know that AI can inherit the biases of its creators; I intend to be the person in the room who ensures those biases are identified and dismantled. I imagine creating platforms that help organizations like Martha’s Kitchen optimize food distribution networks using predictive analytics, ensuring no resource goes to waste in the San Jose area. Ultimately, my four years in FIRST have taught me that robots are built by teams, but the future is built by those who dare to innovate for others. With the support of the AROC AI/ML Scholarship, I will continue to refine my technical skills to create a world where AI doesn't just process data—it solves human problems. I am ready to transition from a student mentor to a professional pioneer, ensuring that the doors I’ve walked through remain wide open for every aspiring coder who follows.

I am the granddaughter of Dr. Dorothy J. Buckner, who walked across the Howard University College of Medicine stage in 1969 as the first physician in our family. I am the daughter of Michelle Buckner, who served as an Information System Security Officer at NASA and built a career at the intersection of data science, machine learning, and cybersecurity, fields where Black women remain seriously underrepresented. She did it while raising me on her own after my father passed away during my elementary school years. The line of women I come from did not teach me to be ambitious. They taught me to be useful. There is a difference. Ambition wants the title. Usefulness wants the problem solved. That mindset is what drew me to bioengineering. Watching my grandmother practice medicine taught me that medicine is at its best when it treats people, not charts. But losing my father showed me that the tools available to physicians are not always enough. Bioengineering is what happens when medicine and engineering refuse to accept those limits, and it is the work I am preparing to do for the rest of my life. My passion for the field has been built one experience at a time. Through four years on the Janksters FIRST Robotics Competition team, I learned that engineering is iterative, collaborative, and humbling. A summer at Drexel University studying materials science under a faculty mentor showed me how the structure of a material at the molecular level determines its real-world behavior, and opened a door I did not know existed. The California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science at UC Davis and Stanford AI Camp pushed me into the kinds of computational and biomedical engineering that operate at the edge of what is currently possible. Each program raised the ceiling on what I thought I could do. Service is the other half of who I am. For the last three years, I have volunteered as a robotics mentor at Holy Family School and St. Martin of Tours School in San Jose, working specifically with younger students on FTC and FRC programs. Many of the girls in those programs gravitate toward documentation roles by default, leaving the build work to the boys. I make a point to sit beside them at the workbench, hand them the drill, walk them through the calculations, and make clear that there is nothing in the room they cannot do. I also serve as president of my school's Science Olympiad and Chemistry Olympiad clubs, where I organize STEM workshops for children ages eight to twelve at our local library. The point is not to recruit them. The point is to make sure that when they wonder whether they belong in science, they have already met someone who looks like them and said yes. This fall, I will begin my Bioengineering studies at UC Berkeley, where I plan to focus on medical device design and brain-computer interfaces. The first patients to receive fully implanted, wireless brain-computer interfaces are alive right now. The students starting Bioengineering programs this fall are the ones who will be in the lab when this technology becomes routine medicine. I want to be one of them. The lasting impact I want to make is twofold. I want to build medical devices that meaningfully extend what the human body can do, and I want every Black girl who walks into a lab after me to find that the door has been propped open a little wider than it was when I got there.

I am the kind of person who goes back to the shop at eleven at night to find the variable I missed. That sounds like a line about engineering, and it is, but it is really a line about how I am wired. When something does not work, whether it is a robotics arm that failed at a scrimmage, a relationship that has gotten quiet, or a younger student at Holy Family School who is convinced she is bad at math, my instinct is the same. Sit with it. Walk through every assumption. Find the one you skipped. Try again. I am also the granddaughter of a woman who walked across the Howard University College of Medicine stage in 1969 as the first physician in our family, and the daughter of a woman who built a career in cybersecurity and machine learning while raising me on her own after my father passed. The line of women I come from did not teach me to be ambitious. They taught me to be useful. There is a difference. Ambition wants the title. Usefulness wants the problem solved. What makes me me is the place where engineering and that lineage meet. I want to build medical devices that work the first time, mentor girls who think they do not belong at the workbench, and leave every room I enter a little more navigable for the person who walks in after me.

The moment I knew technology was going to be the rest of my life happened in a high school robotics shop at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. I was a sophomore on the Janksters, the FIRST Robotics Competition team at Notre Dame High School in San Jose. We had a six-week build season to design, fabricate, program, and field a competition robot, and I was working on an arm mechanism that had to lift a game piece, rotate it, and place it on a scoring platform within a fifteen second window. I had run the math, drafted the CAD, and pushed the design to fabrication. At our first scrimmage, the arm failed under load on the third attempt. The motor stalled, the joint flexed in a direction I had not modeled, and we lost the match in front of three hundred people. I wanted to disappear from the team. Instead, I went back to the shop that night and started walking through every assumption in my model. Around eleven, I found it. I had calculated the torque required at full extension but had not accounted for the dynamic load when the arm was decelerating. I redesigned the joint, added a bracing element, and we shipped the new version in time for our regional. It worked. That night taught me what technology actually feels like from the inside. It is not the polished demos. It is sitting alone with a problem, refusing to look away from your own mistake, and finding the variable you missed. I have chased that feeling ever since. I deepened my technical foundation through the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science at UC Davis, a Material Science and Engineering Institute program at Drexel University, and Stanford AI Camp, each one pushing me further into the kinds of engineering that operate at the edge of what is currently possible. This fall, I will begin my Bioengineering studies at UC Berkeley, where I plan to focus on medical device design and brain-computer interfaces. The notion that a thought, a real electrical signal in a real human brain, can be decoded and translated into the movement of a prosthetic limb feels like the closest thing to magic that engineering produces. And the people doing this work are not magicians. They are bioengineers, neuroscientists, and signal processing experts who understand that a thought is a pattern, and a pattern can be read. The challenges I have faced in tech are mostly the quiet ones. Being the only girl at the workbench. Watching the boys default to the build roles while the girls drift toward documentation. Hearing my own technical answers attributed, a beat later, to whoever said them louder. I have spent the last three years volunteering as a robotics mentor at Holy Family School and St. Martin of Tours School in San Jose, working specifically with younger girls, putting drills in their hands, and making clear that there is nothing in this room they cannot do. That work matters to me as much as the engineering. What excites me most about the future of the field is that it is being rewritten right now. The first patients to receive fully implanted, wireless brain-computer interfaces are alive today. The students starting Bioengineering programs this fall are the ones who will be in the lab when this technology becomes routine medicine. I want to be one of them, and I want the workbench beside mine to be full of girls who once wondered if they belonged there.

I did not choose STEM. It chose me before I understood what the word meant. I grew up working in my grandmother's medical office in San Jose from the time I was twelve. She is a physician who has practiced for decades, and her office was where I first understood that the world runs on systems, and that systems can be improved. I watched her work with instruments that sometimes failed, documentation processes that slowed her down, and equipment that required constant workarounds. I started asking why things were built the way they were. Nobody told me that was engineering. I just knew it felt like the right question. Robotics gave me the vocabulary to start answering it. For four years I designed and fabricated mechanical systems on my high school's FRC robotics team, running torque calculations, building drivetrains, and integrating control systems under competitive pressure. I also spent three of those years mentoring middle school students through the Pyrobotics program at Holy Family School, teaching CAD design, gear ratios, and mechanical engineering fundamentals. That is where I first saw how important representation is for girls in STEM. Many of the girls walked in assuming they were there to help with logistics or stay on the sidelines. I started putting tools directly in their hands and encouraging them to try before they had time to doubt themselves. Most of them never looked back. That experience taught me that women are not just needed in STEM because the field needs more people. We bring different questions, different experiences, and different ways of seeing problems. When I studied materials science at Drexel University the summer before junior year, I was not only thinking about how a material performs under stress. I was thinking about what happens to a surgical instrument after thousands of sterilization cycles in a hospital that cannot afford to replace it often. That question came from growing up close to medicine, close to patients, and close to the reality that even the best technology does not help people if it is not accessible. This fall I will enter UC Berkeley's Bioengineering program with a specific goal: to design surgical instrumentation that gives surgeons better real-time information during procedures. I am interested in force feedback systems, tremor detection, and tools that help close the gap between what a surgeon intends and what happens at the tissue level. I want to help create devices that work reliably not only in major academic medical centers, but also in community hospitals and underserved clinics. The patients who need precision surgery most should not be the ones furthest from it. That gap is a design problem, and I intend to spend my career working on it. As a young woman entering one of the most selective engineering programs in the country, I also feel a responsibility beyond my own success. I plan to stay involved in mentorship and pipeline programs throughout college, continuing the work I started at Holy Family. The next generation of women in STEM will not fill the gap simply because doors are left open. Someone has to walk through first, turn around, and make it clear the room was always theirs too. I chose to pursue STEM because the problems it can solve are real, urgent, and deeply personal to me. I want to make a difference by building tools that work for more people and by making sure the next group of girls holding a drill for the first time knows exactly what they are capable of.

Service was never something I had to be taught. It was just the water I grew up in. From age twelve I worked in my grandmother's medical office in San Jose, watching her care for patients with the same steadiness whether the day was easy or hard. I learned early that showing up consistently for other people is its own form of devotion. That understanding shaped everything that came after, including four years mentoring middle school students at Holy Family School through the Pyrobotics robotics program, regular volunteering at Martha's Kitchen feeding families in our community, and environmental restoration work with Our City Forest. By the time I graduated, I had well over a hundred hours of community service, not because I was counting, but because I was not thinking about stopping. This fall I will enter the Bioengineering program at the University of California, Berkeley, where I plan to focus on surgical instrumentation and medical device design. My goal is to build tools that give surgeons better real-time information during procedures, devices that detect tremor, measure applied force, and reduce the margin for human error in the operating room. That goal did not come from a textbook. It came from years of being close to medicine and close to people who needed it to work. While I am at Berkeley I plan to get involved in engineering pipeline programs for underrepresented students, particularly young Black women who may not yet see themselves in technical fields. I know what it means to walk into a room and wonder if you belong there. I started putting tools directly in the hands of girls who had that look during my robotics mentoring sessions, not asking first, just expecting them to use them. Several of those students went on to compete at regional tournaments. I want to scale that instinct. I want to find the Berkeley equivalents of those Holy Family sixth graders and do the same thing. Post graduation, I want to work on surgical devices that close the gap between the best medical technology available and the communities that need it most but currently cannot access it. The people who build medical tools are not yet representative of all the patients those tools are meant to serve, and that gap shows up in every stage of the design process. I want to spend my career making that gap smaller, both by what I build and by who I bring into the rooms where those decisions get made. Reading about Abby, I kept returning to one phrase: "Miss No Stress." Not because the challenges were not real, but because she understood something I have been learning my whole life. You can carry hard things without being crushed by them. You can move through difficulty with faith and grace and still show up fully for the people around you. My father died when I was in elementary school. My mother has worked two jobs most of my life to keep our family in our home. My grandfather, a veteran with dementia, now lives with us. I know something about carrying things quietly and still moving forward. Abby believed in celebrating the good in life and walking forward with purpose. That is exactly what I intend to do, for her, for the communities I come from, and for the patients who are waiting for tools that actually work.

My father, Alex Heck, died on October 30, 2017. I was in elementary school. I did not fully understand what that date would mean for the rest of my life until years later, when I started to see what my mother, Michelle Buckner, had quietly taken on without ever asking for recognition. Michelle worked two jobs for most of my childhood to keep our family in our home. She did not talk much about how hard it was. She just kept going, and I learned from watching her that showing up is its own form of love. When she lost one of her jobs in 2025, I watched her recalibrate without complaint, even as our circumstances tightened and the weight at home grew heavier. That weight grew significantly when my grandfather moved in. He has dementia, and his care falls primarily on my mother. She is a single parent in her own right, now also caring for an aging parent while trying to find new employment. Our household is one where everyone carries something. I have tried to carry my share. Since age twelve I have worked in my grandmother's medical office, managing billing, compliance documentation, and administrative operations. That income has not gone toward luxuries. It has gone toward building the kind of stability that lets me focus on school, on robotics, on the future I am trying to build. I did not qualify for meaningful FAFSA support, and family financial assistance is not an option. Berkeley is expensive. The gap between what I can earn and what college costs is real, and I have had to build a plan around that gap rather than around any assumption of help. That planning has shaped me in ways I am still understanding. Losing my father young meant I grew up knowing that nothing is guaranteed. Watching my mother work through grief and financial pressure and caregiving without losing her dignity meant I understood early that character is not what you have, it is what you do when you have less than you need. Working in a clinical environment as a child, handling real responsibilities with real consequences, meant I never had the option of being careless. I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking for the chance to close a financial gap that has nothing to do with my ability or my commitment. I am entering UC Berkeley's Bioengineering program this fall with a clear purpose: to design surgical instrumentation that makes medical care more reliable for patients who cannot afford for things to go wrong. That goal did not come from a classroom. It came from a life spent close to medicine, close to caregiving, and close to what it costs a family when the systems that are supposed to work do not. My mother never stopped. My grandfather served this country and now deserves to be cared for with the same steadiness. I intend to honor both of them by finishing what I have started. This scholarship would not change my direction. It would make the road a little less steep.