The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is turn on the sink to brush my teeth, then shower, then boil some water in the kitchen to make tea—simple routines that I hardly ever stop to think about. Living in my suburban town, access to clean water is just the turn of a faucet away, yet this lifestyle is unimaginable for billions of people around the world. While I go about my day not thinking twice about the water I drink, many find access to clean water a daily battle. Water scarcity causes health problems, exacerbates gender disparities, and facilitates a cycle of poverty. According to the UN, women and children are the demographics who mainly collect water, and many must spend the whole day walking for water leaving no time to attend school. The walk for water isn’t just long and pain-staking, it’s dangerous. Carrying 40 lbs of water alone means these women are prone to injuries and are attacked frequently. After all this, most of the water is filled with germs and bacteria, leaving these populations most susceptible to diseases, dehydration, and death—and 2.2 billion people live this way. Most of the current solutions to this problem, like desalination plants, irrigation systems, and solar stills require funding—yet those most affected live in poverty, making these solutions nearly impossible to implement. The question then becomes, “How do we provide safe, potable water in a cost-effective and widely accessible way?” Oceans are the largest natural bodies of water on earth, so finding a way to convert ocean water into drinking water would create a virtually unlimited supply. Evaporation and condensation are weather patterns we see every day over oceans, and we can use these natural phenomena to our advantage by collecting condensation in large quantities. While collecting rainwater uses this phenomenon, relying on rain does not provide a stable water income. Just like how we see water droplets coat the outside of our car windows on an early morning, plexiglass panes could be placed in such a way that they float above a body of water at an angle, so that when water evaporates, it sticks to the panes and drips down into a collection area. Plexiglass is a relatively cheap yet extremely strong and long-standing material. This would create a long-term and affordable solution for communities in need. This is just one idea of a specific product that could clean ocean water, but there could be many more innovations just waiting to be thought of and created. As an engineer, I feel that many environmental issues can’t be solved by simply treating the symptoms, rather we must treat the source. Water scarcity is the source of disease and inequality among billions of people. With the help of my engineering education, I hope to create solutions to environmental issues, ultimately helping the quality of human life in the long term.

My mom wanted to be a doctor when she was in high school. Biology and physiology were her strong suits, and the science behind human functions fascinated her. As much as she loved medicine, the day she was told “women should stick to medicine and men should stick to engineering”, she decided it was time for a change and graduated with a degree in electronics engineering. Living in India, she wasn’t allowed to decide what clothes she could wear. She wasn’t allowed to have financial independence, a job, or a choice in her marriage. She wasn’t even allowed to name me when I was born. She tells me she is lucky she met my dad because after they got married he welcomed her desire for independence. He didn’t care if she had a job or wore knee-length skirts or kept the money she earned to herself. Even when people around them criticized their choices in letting my mom have independence, especially after I was born, they didn’t care and ensured I had a life better than what they grew up with. Now, after moving to the US in a predominantly white-populated town, my family faces our fair share of cultural differences with our community. My parents ensured the inside of our home was filled with images of our culture, and the outside was adorned with rangolis and dias during Hindu festivals. When people tease my parents about how our Gods “have so many arms” or complain about how our food smells so strong, they just laugh and explain their history and traditions with a smile, ready to share knowledge and food. My father’s open-mindedness has taught me to fully comprehend another person’s perspective before shutting them out or getting angry. He taught me that even though some people may make comments that are rude or insensitive, it is only because they don’t have the full story; there is no use getting angry at someone for not knowing, and it is our job to share knowledge—otherwise, how can we expect them to communicate sensitively? My father taught me how to not just hear, but listen and understand opposing perspectives before coming to conclusions. His attitude has helped shape my ability to not only connect with people whose opinions differ from mine, but it has allowed me to formulate my own opinions. His influence subsequently made me a better participant in difficult conversations. After moving to America, my mom found herself a job, but after 10 years of working was refused any hope of upward mobility at her company. Needing further financial stability to raise me and my newborn sister, she taught herself to code, earning online certifications and working at small startups for 15 years until she finally saved enough to earn her Master’s degree in software engineering just last year. Watching my mother check out hundreds of coding books from our local library and spending hours coding is what inspires me to not give up as I pursue my mechanical engineering degree. When I do badly on a test or am exhausted from assignments, I think about my mom and my motivation immediately comes back. Channeling her tenacity in me gives me confidence that I can do difficult things too.

One of my favorite quotes my old high school robotics coach used to say was, “Engineering is just like building legos, except our legos are WAY more expensive,”. In elementary school, I loved (and still do) crafts and art—coupled with a strong aversion to math. Walking into my 3rd-grade class, you would always find me doing one of two things, coloring with as many colorful markers as I could find or playing in the classroom Lego pit. Every birthday whenever my dad asked me what I wanted, it would always be art supplies and a new LEGO Friends set, since I was adamant about building a collection of every Friends’ Dream Houses. Eventually, the dream houses I built out of Legos would turn into buildings, and by middle school I’d ask for Lego Architecture sets, trying to recreate the Eiffel Tower or Taj Mahal. Soon enough, I was messing around with Lego Mindstorm sets, trying to code Lego robots, and eventually in high school sketching prototypes for 120-pound aluminum robots. This slow transition made me realize how creativity was actually at the root of engineering. It taught me that engineering is just like art, except instead of paints, brushes, and canvas we use math, science, and occasionally metal. With a history of white and male demographics dominating the STEM field, many students are immediately turned off by the idea of getting involved in STEM. This was a huge problem in my high school, as I lived in a predominantly white town and I was one of three women of color on the team until my senior year. In addition, STEM degrees have a reputation for being difficult to pursue due to their intense math and science requirements, but I hope to show how math and science are only half of what is required to be a good engineer. I aim to be an example of how physical appearances don’t determine a creative engineer. One of the most important parts of my high school robotics experience was that having even just one other POC or woman in the room made me feel like I belonged. I aim to stay in the STEM field to help other minorities feel the same way. I hope to encourage students younger than me who might find STEM daunting or too “mathy” to realize how artistic STEM can be. As I pursue a degree in mechanical engineering, I hope to encourage other students my age or even older to stay in the STEM field. Retention is the most crucial part of diversifying the STEM field, and I hope that I can be a friend, classmate, and/or co-worker who supports BIPOC people around me. As a result of increasing retention, I hope to help create an environment where being a person of color (or any minority for that matter) is no longer something we need to point out or emphasize. I want to help create an environment where being BIPOC and pursuing a degree in STEM is normalized and no longer something that stands out. I hope to create an environment where being a POC in STEM is no longer needed to “work towards” because it already exists.