Camila Hayashi

 Every day we ate Japanese food, which my dad cooked. He was a stay-at-home dad, but worked odd jobs – like as a sea urchin deliveryman – to supplement my mom’s income. I went to a Japanese language immersion elementary school. On Sundays I went to Catholic Mass with my mom and grandmother, who mostly spoke to me in Spanish. We had huge Colombian family gatherings. With this upbringing, it’s hard for me to just mark one box for my ethnicity or race. I am proudly Latina and Japanese, a unique and ever-changing mix.

Coming to Stanford was stressful at first since I didn’t have my family here to keep me grounded. But when I joined the Society of Latino Engineers (SOLE), I found my family. Being with such a diverse and loving crowd made me feel like I was back home. And aside from sharing cultures, we share a lot of the same goals: We want to change the world for the better through engineering, and we want to help other Latinos do the same. Recently, we’ve been developing the Society of Latina Engineers, or SLAE, to make sure that Latinas and other women of color feel just as supported in SOLE and to make our members aware of the intersections between gender issues and ethnicity issues.

I’m studying chemical engineering because I want to solve some of the problems the world is going to face in the next 100 years. I came into Stanford really interested in biomedical problems. But the more I learn, the more I realize that there are so many fields I could help with as a chemical engineer: renewable energy, clean and sustainable manufacturing, food production, even science policy. Still, I’m fascinated by medicine, and in my current research, we’re looking at how we can repair bone defects using stem cells and biomaterials. As the world’s population ages, we’re going to need more efficient and readily available treatment options for bone defects. The process of finding a problem, understanding it and engineering a solution for it motivates me to be an engineer.