Meet Aya Mouallem
An engineer from Lebanon, Aya wants to live in a more accessible world, one where engineering opportunities are available to everyone, especially marginalized communities.
What are your academic interests? How does accessibility play a role in your studies?
I work at the intersection of electronics, accessibility, and education, so it’s a very interdisciplinary area. I build education technology tools to improve the accessibility of engineering education to students who are blind and or have low vision.
This aligns with my diversity and inclusion work back home in Lebanon, where I started All Girls Code, an award-winning initiative encouraging girls to pursue STEM studies and careers. In Lebanon, only 25% of engineering students at universities are women. The numbers are comparable in the Arab world, so my initiative has focused on addressing this. I have been working on equitable access to engineering education since my undergraduate studies. When I came to Stanford, this work naturally extended into my PhD thesis topic.
What type of work are you pursuing at Stanford?
When I first came to Stanford, I joined an electrical engineering lab. While I loved designing circuits for electronic chips, I recognized how chip design in research was expensive, costing thousands of dollars for different iterations, and some projects took several years to materialize into products that could be used by consumers. Thus, I started to gravitate to ideas that aligned more closely with my holistic interests. I began to think about how we can build technology that improves equity and accessibility in engineering education while also easily scaling its impact in different settings. Last year, I was selected as a fellow in the inaugural RAISE (Research, Action, and Impact through Strategic Engagement) Doctoral Fellowship Program, which supports community-centered research efforts. I’m now working closely with the blind and low-vision community in the San Francisco Bay Area to create educational technology that will amplify their abilities in engineering. In general, lab settings are inaccessible to students who are blind or have low vision, due to the significant dependence of tools and components on visual cues and context. At the same time, the skills gained in a lab can end up influencing career prospects, creativity, and fundamental learning outcomes. I want the tools I’m developing to facilitate these opportunities for students of all visual abilities at Stanford, and these tools will be low-cost, replicable, and open-sourced to scale easily to global educational settings, especially in developing countries.
What does the average week as a graduate student look like for you?
When I’m not in class, most of my time is spent in my office at the Center for Design Research. I work with visiting researchers and doctoral students affiliated with my research group, the Designing Education Lab, led by my phenomenal adviser, Professor Sheri Sheppard. Soon, I’ll be spending more time at the lab and at makerspaces at Stanford, building technology for my tools.
In my free time, I've been involved with the Knight-Hennessy art committee, so I’ve organized trips to the SF Ballet, SF Opera, and the Van Gogh immersive exhibit. I spend my evenings catching up with my friends and family, and I like to run and hike as well, so I try to get out as often as possible to jog around the Stanford campus and hike in the Bay Area.
Tell us about your journey to pursuing your studies at Stanford.
My journey to Stanford was unconventional. The year before I finished my undergraduate studies in Lebanon, a revolution started due to the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions. I was applying to universities at the same time I was joining protests. I almost decided to stay in Lebanon and not apply internationally, because I felt hopeful about staying and trying to fix what’s broken in the country.
During August 2020, right after I’d graduated, I was on an orientation call with the Knight-Hennessy Scholars team. While on this call, one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history blew up half of the capital, Beirut*. It was absolutely catastrophic and devastating. I decided to start the first quarter of my PhD remotely so I could stay in Lebanon and volunteer, which was possible only because of the remote learning environment during the pandemic. Most of my classes and office hours took place after midnight in Lebanon, but it was more important to me to stay and help with the relief efforts.
Since moving to the States, I continue to be heavily involved with efforts back home and help virtually however I can. I’m still active with All Girls Code and with LebNet, a nonprofit bringing together Lebanese people in technology in North America.
How is your experience as a Knight-Hennessy scholar shaping your graduate school experience?
The community of Knight-Hennessy scholars has been indispensable. Ever since I moved to the States, it’s been my family away from home, providing me with lots of love, comfort, and encouragement. The community’s insight and support through exceptional challenges in Lebanon have helped me settle relatively smoothly into a graduate program in a new country.
My Knight-Hennessy friends have been there for everything, from birthdays to last-minute adventures across the States to professional and academic milestones. When I was preparing for my doctoral qualifying exams, I practiced several times with my Knight-Hennessy friends because they come from a variety of backgrounds and my research is at the intersection of so many fields. Their feedback was extremely valuable!
Knight-Hennessy Scholars focuses on complex decision-making and how we can navigate these decisions with humility and empathy. This is extremely meaningful to me as my research amplifies the voices of marginalized groups, so I have applied a lot of my learning from Knight Hennessy workshops to my research efforts.
Being a scholar also provides me with amazing opportunities. I’ve gotten really valuable advice from Tina Seelig and John Hennessy, the directors of Knight-Hennessy, on so many professional and personal matters. Moreover, I interviewed Melinda Gates in 2021 for the Knight-Hennessy Scholars McMurtry Leadership Lecture. This was an incredible complement to my graduate studies experience because my research aligns with a lot of her work pertaining to community-centered engagement. Finally, I got to travel to one of the southernmost points in the world in Chile on a global study trip with my Knight-Hennessy friends and incredible faculty lead, Rob Dunbar, exploring critical social and environmental issues, as well as governmental, community-led, and business responses. These are just some experiences that I wouldn’t imagine having during graduate school without Knight-Hennessy Scholars.
Have you had specific experiences with Knight-Hennessy Scholars that were particularly meaningful?
I’m incredibly grateful to have found lifelong friendships through Knight-Hennessy. I also really appreciate how supportive and present the Knight-Hennessy team has been for me. The Knight-Hennessy directors and team members have always kept in touch with me, sometimes following up with Lebanese news and checking in to make sure I’m doing okay. They’ve also amplified and celebrated my accomplishments before I had the chance to! They’ve really invested in reaching out to communities I care about. For example, last summer, I proposed to the Knight-Hennessy admissions team that I’d like to do some outreach in Lebanon while I was visiting home to encourage more applicants from the country to the program. The team’s response was so swift, smooth, and streamlined. They handled the logistics and connected me with contacts at my alma mater. They provided me with very helpful resources and followed up for feedback after. I was so proud to talk to more than 40 attendees of the info session that I ended up hosting.
I also appreciate that Knight-Hennessy Scholars is still developing. The program is still growing. Our insight as scholars is taken very seriously, and we are helping fundamentally shape the program.
What advice would you give to others who want to become Knight-Hennessy Scholars?
Stanford and Knight-Hennessy are two communities that have your back. I found really supportive figures in the engineering departments who have helped me shape my research and continuously meet my milestones. If you have an ambitious, interdisciplinary idea, Stanford is the place to be, so take the risk and apply. I also don't think my work would have its beautiful, community-centric outline had I not been exposed to what Knight-Hennessy Scholars offers.
I don't think I would've found this lifelong community of friends and mentors had I not joined Knight-Hennessy Scholars. I ended up intertwining a lot of the work that I put in for both applications, Knight-Hennessy and my PhD program, because I was focused on community engagement and social justice, so that was a natural approach. I was vulnerable and authentic in my application, which I also found to be very introspective. I'm so happy that I put in the extra work and applied, and I think everyone who applies to Stanford for graduate studies should definitely seize the Knight-Hennessy opportunity, too.
*Article authored by Aya in 2020 about this incident