Spotlights

Yuji Takubo
PhD candidate
When you’re in a PhD program and you know you’ll be spending years working toward an academic or …
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Hannah Nabavi
MS ’26
Aeronautics and Astronautics
When I first came to Stanford, I was inspired because I saw that the courses aren’t just …
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Noah Eckman
PhD candidate
Chemical Engineering
I’m excited to go into work every day because someone might be working on something I don’t …
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Samuel King
PhD candidate
Bioengineering
I grew up in a very rural part of Canada and loved the outdoors, so I initially wanted to become a …
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Marigold Malinao
PhD candidate
Materials Science and Engineering
I’ve always been inclined toward math and science, but it’s still a bit of a mystery how I chose …
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Varun Madan
Undergraduate
Computer Science
In some ways you could say honeybees are the reason I’m at Stanford today …
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Sonia Martin
PhD candidate
Mechanical Engineering
When I first began making decisions about college and my career, I didn’t even know what …
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Thomas Colburn
PhD candidate
Materials Science and Engineering
I was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. We were …
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Kayla Patterson
MS ’24
Computer Science
I was born and raised in Robbinsville, a small town in central New Jersey …
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Adrienne Propp
PhD candidate
Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering
I never planned to become a mathematician. I liked math growing up because it made sense to me – …
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Lara Weed
PhD candidate
Bioengineering
I was always interested in how the world worked, and looking back now, I can see my interest in …
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Sebastian Fernández
PhD candidate
Electrical Engineering
I was born in Cusco, Peru, located at an altitude of 11,000 feet in the Andes, where we lived with …
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Tinevimbo Ndlovu
MS ’24
Aeronautics and Astronautics
I’ve always thought planes were cool. I went on my first flight when I was 6, from my hometown of …
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Gregory Zaborski
PhD candidate
Materials Science and Engineering
I was raised by my Sicilian mother in the small town of Saugerties in upstate New York …
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Edward Apraku
PhD candidate
Civil & Environmental Engineering
I was born in Kumasi, Ghana, and moved to the U.S. with my parents and older sister when I was 2 …
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Emma Kaeli
PhD candidate
Materials Science and Engineering
When I first started college, someone asked if I wanted to join the Society of Women Engineers, but …
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Skyler St. Pierre
PhD candidate
Mechanical Engineering
I study how we can use neural networks and machine learning to better understand the mechanics of …
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Michael Kwara
PhD candidate
Aeronautics and Astronautics
During the peak of COVID when large gatherings were rare, I joined thousands of people on a beach …
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Neil Band
PhD candidate
Computer Science
I was born in Boston, but I grew up in the Midwest, and lived in Chicago for a while before our …
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Guillem Casadesús Vila
MS ’24
Aeronautics and Astronautics
When I was around 14, NASA landed the Curiosity rover on Mars and it was an aha moment for me …
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Kavya Sreedhar
PhD candidate
Electrical Engineering
I grew up in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, but by the time I was in eighth grade, my family had moved …
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Rachel Huang
PhD candidate
Materials Science and Engineering
I was born in China’s Hunan Province and came to the U.S. alone when I was 17 …
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