SCIENCE AMBASSADOR: Voorhees, N.J., native Sona Dadhania, 19, a rising sophomore in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, was recently awarded the 2016 Science Ambassador Scholarship, which is funded by Cards Against Humanity. The full tuition scholarship will cover her remaining undergraduate years at Penn.
INTRODUCING STEM: As part of her scholarship, Dadhania will create videos about science, technology, engineering, and math that will be featured on Cards Against Humanity’s YouTube channel, write a blog talking about her experiences as a STEM college student, and do local outreach to get younger students interested in and familiar with the STEM fields.
IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS: For the scholarship application, Dadhania submitted a video explaining nanotechnology. “It’s something I’ve gotten really interested in, especially coming into Penn and starting to take some classes,” she says. “I thought it would be something that most people haven’t really heard about or know about. I only learned about it when I came to college, so I thought it would be cool to explain it to other people who might not be there yet.”
LIVED EXPERIENCE: Dadhania says she decided to apply for the scholarship because of the opportunity to introduce science and engineering to pre-college students. “If I was younger, I think I would have really appreciated that,” she says. “I would have really appreciated someone who was actually there and who actually knows what it’s like to do that, to actually talk to me about it. I thought it would be cool if I can act like that for someone else, to give them something I didn’t have a chance to get.”
SONA’S FAVORITE THINGS: Dadhania says she chose to major in materials science and engineering because it is the perfect combination of all her favorite subjects. “It’s chemistry, some physics, and a little bit of math, too,” she says. “The basic principle centers around understanding the properties of materials at their very smallest level—like atomic/nanoscale level—in order to manipulate them or design them in such a way to suit our needs. The whole principle is something I really understand, something I really like personally.”
BIG PLANS: Dadhania is currently working with Russell J. Composto, a professor of materials science and engineering, and doctoral student Boris Rasin at the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program. She says her dream job would be working in research and development at a large corporation doing innovative things. “If I come back and pursue a graduate degree, I hope I’ll be able to pursue really advanced research in nanotechnology,” she says. “There are a lot of big things happening in the materials world in terms of energy and those type of fields, so I hope in 10 years I’m part of these big developments and part of these big changes.”
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