Growing adult in Lagos, Nigeria, Somto Uyanna ’۱۸ was struck by how dramatically infrastructure shapes people’s lives.
“I felt a weight of roads in bad condition, unsound energy supply, and visit peep flooding, among other infrastructural problems,” she said. “But what’s worse is that my knowledge was improved than that of many Nigerians.”
Intent on requesting her passion for math and scholarship to broach petrify improvements to communities like her hometown, Uyanna came to Columbia to turn a polite engineer.
“I like to consider of polite engineering as a many amicable of a engineering fields, since we emanate and say earthy society,” pronounced Uyanna, who is also minoring in earth and environmental engineering. “It’s centered on a sustenance of purify air, water, shelter, and transportation—necessary components of a abounding society.”
Inspired by her studies with Professor Upmanu Lall, executive of a Columbia Water Center, Uyanna concentrates in water-related issues like inundate control, drought preparedness, and providing a beverage supply. In her sophomore year, she worked on a plan building a inundate risk word index to assistance a Lagos State Government establish payouts. Last fall, she collaborated with teammates to pattern a approach beverage reuse trickery to addition a stream supply from exhausting groundwater resources in Fresno, California.
“The plan unprotected me to a routine of creation pattern choices formed on reconciling a needs of a village with accessible resources and prevalent codes and standards,” Uyanna said. “It done me feel like we was finally apropos a genuine engineer.”
For her comparison pattern project, Uyanna has been collaborating with teammates on conceptualizing a oppulance unit formidable for a before industrial waterfront site on Staten Island, focusing on a geotechnical aspects of building on soothing dirt in an area disposed to seismic activity. The group hopes that a plan will assistance coax new growth along Staten Island’s North Shore.
She has also contributed to building amicable infrastructure for African students during Columbia and around a world. Uyanna was a clamp boss of a African Development Group, providing opportunities for students to work with organizations in Africa, and is now operative on a book expostulate for low-income communities. She helped classify a annual Columbia University African Economic Forum, hosted by a business school, and served as conduct of a African Students Association’s Afropolitan Planning Committee, putting together an annual showcase of different cultures from opposite a continent.
After graduating this spring, Uyanna skeleton to possibly pursue a master’s in H2O resources engineering or go true to work in a field. In a prolonged term, she hopes to deliberate with municipalities and supervision agencies in Africa and around a world.
“Everyone should have entrance to simple amenities and be means to live comfortably,” she said. “Engineering is a means by that we can minister solutions to some of a issues that matter many to me.”
—by Jesse Adams
