Katrina Gates
The Ohio State University
Katrina Gates, a fourth-year student in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University, is a humanitarian engineer committed to effecting social change and elevating quality of life across the nation and around the world. She has organized blood drives, improved hospital care for patients and helped low-income communities in South Africa. She also works with her fellow classmates in Buck-I-SERV — the largest alternative break program in the country — to plan weeklong trips for students to engage in community service. Katrina hopes to one day “have a positive impact on the world through science and technology.”
Personal Statement
Katrina Gates is a fourth-year engineering student at the Ohio State University and is a student leader who is active in a variety of organizations across campus. Katrina’s main involvement has been serving on Ohio State’s Buck-I-SERV board, helping to coordinate trips that cover a wide range of social justice topics and running the team that creates educational materials for trip leaders. She believes that through education, you can create a passion in others for social justice issues. She hopes to continue to fuel the passion of others and has done so by mentoring freshmen that are interested in humanitarian engineering by showing them how to incorporate social justice into their education. Katrina hopes to further educate others about social justice by continuing to expand her own knowledge and teach others about how small daily actions could cause social change. Katrina used her technological skills in South Africa on a research project which had the goal of creating jobs, bringing electricity to rural areas of South Africa and alleviating the spread of HIV/AIDS. She hopes to use empathy to power technology and innovation in her future career.
