2023-24 Scholarship Winners Announced

This year our AAUW Grosse Pointe branch again awarded two scholarships in the amount of $1,500 each to two graduating seniors at Grosse Pointe North High School and two at Grosse Pointe South High School who have selected a career in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, math).

The scholarship committee worked extensively to develop an equitable and fair application with clear objective metrics for evaluation in the selection process. They focused on academic excellence, participation and leadership in school and community, and STEM career goals. The applicants’ essays weighed heavily in the selection. They were asked, “If you could use your STEM discipline to create any innovation that would change the future, what would it be and why?”  

The applicants were all outstanding which made the selection difficult.

Listed below are the scholarship winners.

Kaitlyn Barr, Grosse Pointe North. Kaitlyn will attend Worcester Polytechnic Institute, pursuing a career as an Aerospace Engineer. Kaitlyn wants to create a “space robotic rover.”  This machine would have the ability to track space debris in earth’s orbit, and then retrieve and collect it with robotic arms, returning it to the earth. The debris would then be repaired and reused or be safely disposed.

Grace Korkmaz, Grosse Pointe North. Grace will be attend Michigan State University studying
to become a Civil Engineer. Grace hopes to find a solution to the crumbling infrastructure of
cities. Concrete is deteriorating from sun and weather exposure as well as global warming. She

hopes to use recycled plastic waste as a key ingredient in re-formulating or replacing concrete.

Ava Carr, Grosse Pointe South. Ava will attend Dartmouth College, pursuing a career in Biomedical Engineering and subsequently in medicine. Ava’s innovation involves genetic research related to cancer. In 2018, there were 17 million patients with cancer. Since we currently know gene mutations are related to cancer risk, Ava wants to create a process, like CRISPR-Cas 9, that would eliminate the cancer genes. Currently 10% of cancer patients are genetically predisposed. For these identified patients, Ava’s innovative process could prevent cancer in possibly 1.7 million people annually.

Meredith Tiderington, Grosse Pointe South. Meredith will attend Purdue University studying
to become an Engineer. Meredith is interested in developing new and improved prosthetic
devices. Besides making them more comfortable, functional, and affordable, she wants to
include brain-computer interfaces or other sensing technologies to enable amputees to control

their prosthetics through thought or other non-invasive means.

AAUW Grosse Pointe wishes all the best to these fine young women.

AAUW MISSION:  To advance gender equity for women and girls through research

AAUW Grosse Pointe Welcomes STEM Speaker

In keeping with AAUW Grosse Pointe’s commitment to encourage STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in our schools and in careers for women and girls, the branch welcomed Rita Ciaravino to speak about her successful STEM career.

Ms. Ciaravino graduated from Harper Woods High School and in 2008 she graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a BSc degree in mathematics. Her software engineering career has been in early-stage startups, specializing in computer vision and image processing. Currently, Rita is the Chief Software Architect at Onc.AI, a medical image analysis company.

Ms. Ciaravino is a mentor and advocate for women in engineering. Besides developing robotic and computer vision systems, she has addressed the challenge of hiring and supporting women in  tech careers.

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