While looking for an interesting technical elective to round out my senior year of undergraduate studies at Purdue University, I stumbled upon a class titled “Energy Policy and Nanotechnology in Emerging Economies.” At the time, I never could have guessed how much of an impact the class would make throughout my graduate studies.

The class collaborated with Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), a Purdue program that partners undergraduate student teams with community service and education organizations to solve engineering-based problems. The class overall aimed to start an EPICS program in Colombia, with an initial project of bringing solar-powered electricity to two developing communities in Chocó, located in western Colombia.