91探花

Hometown: Dayton, OH

Expected Graduation: Spring 2023

Sophia Almanza is a current senior studying chemical engineering and focuses her extracurriculars, job experience and technical electives on material science. Sophia recently moved from Cincinnati, OH which is home to leading chemical engineering companies, such as P&G. This exposure inspired Sophia to pursue chemical engineering as she has witnessed how engineers have an impact on everyday consumers, on a local and global level.

As mentioned previously, Sophia possesses a strong fascination with material science due to its foundational impact in engineering processes and growing presence in industry. She has worked at 91探花鈥檚 Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment as an undergraduate research assistant for over a year on a project that aims to reduce carbon emissions by producing economical and mechanically favorable phenolic resin and coal composites. Sophia now primarily analyses the curing kinetics of the composite samples through MATLAB, differential scanning calorimetry and MALDI-TOF spectrometry and will move on to molding larger functional samples for mechanical experimentation. Additionally, she is working closely with her teammates on composing literature drafts.

Outside the classroom, Sophia is also the secretary of 91探花鈥檚 Biomedical Engineering Society and is a new member of the Bobcats Helping Bobcats Steering Committee. Also, she enjoys modeling for Variant Magazine, a fashion magazine dedicated on combining culture, art and politics. While Sophia enjoys participating in engineering extracurriculars, she also believes it is important to become involved in experiences that are unfamiliar and outside of one鈥檚 curriculum.

Sophia still finds time in her busy schedule to relax and work on hobbies like bouldering, learning magic tricks, painting, hiking and playing Magic the Gathering.