What is your role?

I am an aerospace engineer, and an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and The Polytechnic School at Arizona State University. I run re-Engineered, an interdisciplinary laboratory that seeks to center ideas of environmental protection, social justice, and peace at the heart of engineering.  

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Why you care about this prize, and what you hope this prize can achieve?

I believe that if people want to live in a world that is just, peaceful, and green, engineers need to help build that world, and engineers can. Every moment engineers spend enhancing our ability to inflict harm on people and the Earth takes us further away from that future. I hope this prize provides inspiration for how engineering can be different, and helps build a constellation of support for it.

 

Who are your role models?

Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi hydraulic engineer who founded Nature Iraq (an NGO focused on the preservation of Iraq’s environment and cultural heritage), and who restored the "once-lush marshes that were turned to dust bowls during Saddam Hussein’s rule," inspires me so much. Dick Gordon, the former host of the radio show The Story, is an example of reason in the world. How he can have a conversation with just about anybody--regardless of their worldviews and beliefs--in ways that are genuinely curious and empathetic I think is so needed in the world.  

 

What is inspiring you right now?

The ability of nature to endure is inspiring me right now.