I have wanted to be an engineer since I was a little kid. I have always loved building and rebuilding, solving problems, collaborating with a team, and affecting change.At Columbia University, I am studying for an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Robotics and Controls, where I am applying my engineering passions to my learning. At Williams College, where I received my Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, I did the same, despite not studying engineering. The small class sizes and collaborative environment allowed me to dig deeply into my interests. I was a finalist for the Ward price in Computer Science for my project designing and writing a graphing visualization programming language, and I researched collision avoidance algorithms in autonomous vehicles for an applied math class. In my summers interning at Ava Robotics, I grew my love for engineering and problem solving. I built, repaired, and tested autonomously navigating telepresence, UV disinfecting, security, and telemedicine robots, and saw firsthand how tirelessly my supervisors and colleagues worked to improve the lives of users and satisfy customers, and helped them to do so. I saw how I can help people as an engineer, resolving their problems by producing solutions.I am from Cambridge, MA, and growing up I traveled around the Boston area by bike, bus, and train. I hope to impact the world by developing autonomous vehicles, making driverless transportation safe, reliable, affordable, and accessible. I am motivated to bring autonomous capabilities to public transit systems like buses and ride shares, allowing autonomous vehicles to reduce our reliance on cars. I will work on motion planning and reshape the transportation industry through engineering. I hope to make construct safer cities for all residents and create a more environmentally friendly, sustainable, and accessible future of transportation.