As we come to the end of the Energy Studies Minor’s fifth year, the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) would like to highlight our 2014 Energy Studies Minor (ESM) seniors. Thirty-four members of the class of 2014 are on track to graduate with the Minor, making this by far the largest cohort to-date. Our students exemplify the strength and diversity of MIT undergraduates. The graduating ESM class includes majors in five Engineering departments, plus SHASS, Sloan, and the School of Science. And, forty percent of our graduating ESM seniors are women. We are so proud of their accomplishments here at MIT, and look forward to continuing to hear of their journeys once they have passed through the doors on June 6th. Congratulations to all of our Energy Studies Minors!
Photo: Justin Knight
A summer internship with BP in her sophomore year altered Zainab Lasisi’s academic focus, and opened up a career path. As a first-year student, she served as a research assistant in the lab run by Ford Professor of Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Biology Douglas Lauffenburger and S.E.T.I Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering Linda Griffith. Lasisi studied in-vitro models of tumor development in endometrial and breast cancers, and her work led to an author credit on a paper in a major journal. “The lab taught me valuable skills,” says Lasisi. “I was torn about continuing medical research.”
But at an internship information session hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Lasisi’s curiosity was piqued when she heard former BP interns describe a work atmosphere “that sounded a lot like MIT, where you can ask as many questions as you want.” When she also learned that the company gave MIT students serious responsibilities, she was sold on a summer at BP’s Thunder Horse Platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
Lasisi was not disappointed with her assignment. “At the very start, BP wanted to challenge me, and they gave me lots of room to be creative,” she says. She was tasked with designing a program to monitor processes that take place prior to emergency shutdown in an oil rig, and with building a software tool incorporating live data on pressure and equipment temperature to generate a picture of the plant’s health over time. “My supervisors were excited with what I gave them, and it made me happy that the work I did was useful and pertinent in the real world.”
Back at MIT, Lasisi determined to drive her chemical engineering major toward energy, and signed up for the Energy Studies Minor. She credits Energy Studies Minor classes with helping her identify industries where she could combine her chemical engineering background and energy interests. “The minor helped inform me about what’s out there, the type of problems we are solving now and in the next decade. It helped me find my path.”
It is a path now focused on finding more energy sources, and producing energy in “climate-friendly ways.” A second BP internship developing parameters for determining future well locations in natural gas fields in south Texas has evolved into a job post-graduation in reservoir engineering in the same region. While she is excited about these engineering challenges in the U.S., Lasisi hopes eventually to return to Nigeria, the country where she was born, which suffers from frequent power outages. “I would like to participate in something that really revitalizes the energy industry, advances it to a place where there is actually constant electricity.”
Zainab Lasisi is a senior in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Energy Studies. Although she spent most of her life in England and Jamaica prior to attending MIT, Lasisi feels strongly connected to Nigeria, her birthplace. She has conversational proficiency in the west-African language, Yoruba, and served as vice president of MIT’s African Student Association. She co-founded the Exposure Robotics League, a summer program for Nigerian secondary school students that combines robotics with mentoring and college prep.
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