These grads are primed to engineer vibrant futures

On May 5, 2024, the college will welcome more than 1,700 new alumni into the Buckeye Engineering family. Meet six inspiring members of the Class of 2024 who are driven to make a difference.

Basia Gabela-Zuniga

Basia Gabela-Zuniga’s interest in science was sparked at a young age by her parents’ godson, Brandon, who has autism.

“I realized early on that something was fundamentally different about his life and my life. That sparked my interest in science as a whole,” Gabela-Zuniga said. “I pursued engineering because I am a little squeamish, so the idea of being like a medical doctor or something along those lines was definitely not interesting to me.”

While earning her bachelor’s in bioengineering and biomedical engineering at the University of California, Merced, Gabela-Zuniga completed two research experiences at Ohio State as part of the Summer Research Opportunities Program. When she decided to earn a PhD, those positive experiences made Ohio State the obvious choice.

“Ohio State was my first experience at a large university and has so many resources for its students,” Gabela-Zuniga said. “I loved being able to collaborate, and be exposed to the medical center and all the different opportunities that Ohio State has to offer.”

Working in the lab of Biomedical Engineering Professor and Chair Samir Ghadiali, Gabela-Zuniga uses engineering tools to address a devastating respiratory condition known as ventilator-induced lung injury. This occurs when patients with a severe infection, such as pneumonia or COVID-19, have trouble breathing and are put on a mechanical ventilator. Unfortunately, the pressure exerted by mechanical ventilators to inflate the lungs and save the lives of patients in respiratory distress often causes further lung damage.

The driven engineer collaborated with pulmonary physicians and biomaterial experts to design, fabricate and test the first ventilator-on-a-chip that accurately mimics complex lung mechanics during ventilation. Her system uses primary human cells and simulates pre-existing conditions, maximizing its potential for use in developing effective therapies for ventilator-induced lung injury.

Although the idea of a ventilator-on-a-chip has long been in the works in Ghadiali’s lab, Gabela-Zuniga brought it to fruition.

“Dr. Ghadiali always jokes that it had been in the making for 10 years. They had this idea and its inception started a couple of years before I entered the lab,” she explained. “But it turned into my baby—how can we get it from this initial design phase to a publishable concept?”

Gabela-Zuniga is a former co-president of the university’s Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student Society. The first-generation college graduate also inspires the next generation in STEM and was the keynote speaker at Ohio State’s 2023 Consortium Research Symposium.

Leaving the ventilator-on-a-chip project in good hands, Gabela-Zuniga trained fellow students in Ghadiali’s lab to continue the research after she graduates. She is currently interviewing for positions in Columbus where she can use her engineering skills to continue to make an impact.

“This lab taught me how to take a problem, critical-think, solve the problem and resilience—what steps need to happen in order for me to keep moving forward again,” she said.

Sebrina Zeleke

Sebrina Zeleke came to Ohio State to further her studies in computer science. She aims to use the skills she gained in the computer science and engineering master’s program to help people in developing countries one day.

“One of the goals I have is using health care machine learning models for developing countries,” she said. “I’m from Ethiopia, so I want to make sure that these advantages are provided to people who live in underdeveloped and developing countries as well.”

Growing up, Zeleke was inspired to study computer science by her brother, who earned a PhD in the discipline. After learning a coding language and creating her own projects, she was hooked.

“I started in high school, playing around with Python, creating some things and genuinely thought it was cool,” she said. “It wasn't that common, at least at the time, for women to be in the tech space to that extent. But it was something that I wanted to do.”

Following in her brother’s footsteps, Zeleke came to the United States and earned a bachelor’s from Calvin University in Michigan. After graduation, she wanted to learn more.

While exploring graduate schools, she was impressed by the expertise and real-world impact of Ohio State’s computer science and engineering faculty. “There's no place else that was able to beat the things the professors here have accomplished and [conduct] research on,” she said.

Zeleke’s thesis research focuses on AI and ethics, primarily in health care. Her advisors—Computer Science and Engineering Professor Tanya Berger-Wolf and Professor Xia Ning—were critical to the success of her research.

“I came with this broad idea of what I wanted to do and they helped me narrow it down, find the data and streamline the whole research process. And it was the greatest research that I have done, in my opinion,” Zeleke explained. “We work on trying to understand a bias performance trade-off of health care algorithms to primarily understand the impact of using demographic data to train the models.”

Zeleke created a general framework that allows developers to test their models to ensure they are unbiased against all patient groups and result in the best performing model for the given application. A paper she wrote about the work was accepted for publication by the 2024 IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

She also completed a data science internship at Liberty Mutual Insurance and was a teaching assistant for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE).

After graduation, Zeleke will be an engineer at Barclays in New Jersey. She credits the financial support and mentorship she received from the CSE department as being key to her success.

“The computer science and engineering department has been so helpful and that was really important to me,” she explained. “They were there every step of the way.”

Alex Cabungcal

At spring commencement, Alex Cabungcal will become one of the first students to earn a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Technology from Ohio State. The new degree program launched in 2020 and is offered on all four regional campuses.

Cabungcal transferred to Ohio State Marion following his first year of college. After learning about the engineering technology program, he thought it would be the perfect fit.

“I was looking at Ohio State because it was closer to home and has a good reputation,” he said. “And then I came across the new major for engineering technology and it seemed like a really good opportunity.”

Cabungcal enjoys the program’s emphasis on building hands-on expertise and leadership skills, as well as the dedicated faculty. As a member of the Engineering Technology Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee, he provides student feedback to help guide future improvements.

“It's been a good experience. Our professors really care about making sure we learn and succeed in our classes—not just getting the grade, but understanding what we're learning,” he said. “That's what I appreciate the most.”

Cabungcal also benefitted from the program’s professional mentoring aspect. After connecting with two engineers from the Whirlpool Corporation’s Marion location during a first-year class, he asked about internship offerings. That led to the first of two summer internships at Whirlpool, where Cabungcal worked in both the controls and materials departments.

“Getting to see how engineers work in industry was a great experience,” he said.

During an internship at ATS Corporation last summer, Cabungcal put his newly learned programmable logic controller (PLC) skills to work on automation systems for manufacturing equipment.

“When I got there, some of the other interns and new engineers didn't know what PLC was and had never heard of it before,” he said. “But it was something I was taught at Marion’s campus in their new program.”

Receiving scholarships was critical to making higher education accessible for Cabungcal.

“Having that help financially has made a huge difference to me,” he said. “It’s something I don't have to worry about or stress about as much, [thanks to] not having such a financial burden from tuition.”

Outside of class, Cabungcal has been highly involved on campus. He served on the Ohio State Marion’s advisory board as the student representative, as Undergraduate Student Government president and secretary, and as president of the Campus Activity Board. He is also a member of the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers’ Ohio State Chapter.

“I am proud of how I sought out various opportunities outside the classroom,” Cabungcal said. “It allowed me to meet and network with others, which led to experiences like summer internships.”

After graduation, Cabungcal will apply his problem-solving prowess as an electro-mechanical engineer at TS Tech Corporation USA in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

Ethan Kaper

Coming from a family of Ohio State grads, Ethan Kaper was raised to be a Buckeye.

He also frequently accompanied his grandpa, an agricultural engineering alumnus who spent his career with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, on visits to water storage structures across Ohio. His grandpa’s infectious passion for his work influenced Kaper’s decision to become an engineer.

“My goal through my entire life was to go to Ohio State, be an agricultural engineer and graduate in the program that I'm in,” the food, agricultural and biological engineering (FABE) major said. “I don't know if it would have been as easy anywhere else to jump into and be a part of the awesome things I've been able to be a part of here.”

Kaper decided to specialize in ecological engineering and tailored his curriculum so he would be prepared to solve water quality problems in both agricultural and urban settings after graduation.

“I love having the opportunity to combine my passions of being outdoors and doing fieldwork, but also making a positive impact around natural resource conservation,” he said.

As an undergraduate research assistant for the past two years, Kaper worked on an urban stormwater research project in Columbus’ Clintonville neighborhood directed by FABE Professor Jay Martin and Assistant Professor Ryan Winston.

He helped collect and analyze data to see if the rain gardens, wetlands and permeable pavement installed as part of the Blueprint Columbus project were effective in reducing and improving the quality of the runoff from the neighborhood.

That experience spurred Kaper to tackle an undergraduate honors thesis, based on the data he helped collect, to evaluate the effects of back-to-back rainfall events on the performance of the watershed-scale controls the city of Columbus installed.

Kaper also completed two career-defining internship experiences while at Ohio State. Last summer, he was a stormwater engineering intern with Wessler Engineering. In 2022, he completed a soil and water engineering internship with the Ohio Department of Agriculture—an impactful experience Martin arranged to help Kaper determine whether working for a government agency or in private industry would suit him best.

“Without that opportunity, I don't think I would be as interested in the government side, because I spent a summer doing something that I would love to do for the rest of my life,” Kaper explained. “That was a passion-defining moment for me.”

Kaper is also president of the Ecological Engineering Society at Ohio State, an organization he and other students worked to restart after the pandemic. The society revitalized a previously installed rainwater garden on campus and is working with a community garden in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus.

After graduation, Kaper will spend the summer working as an engineer for the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming.

Nathan Schmidt

Closed borders during the pandemic meant Nathan Schmidt took his first year of computer science classes remotely from the basement of his home in Westford, Massachusetts, instead of at his university in Canada as planned.

The three-hour time difference between Massachusetts and Vancouver allowed Schmidt, who earned a pilot’s license at age 17, to pursue his passion for flying in the mornings before class. After that initial year, he transferred to Ohio State to study aviation engineering full-time.

“I made the decision to pursue aviation wholeheartedly and the Ohio State aviation program offered the best opportunities," he said. "Ohio State’s close proximity to NetJets, the company I’d like to work for after graduation, further solidified my choice."

Schmidt quickly became involved on campus, joining the Alpha Eta Rho Ohio State chapter, an international aviation co-ed fraternity. As vice president, he plans chapter events, including organizing tours to NetJets and the Columbus Police Department’s Aviation Division.

He also became a student ambassador for the Center for Aviation Studies, where his biggest responsibility was co-organizing the center’s 2023 Networking Week and Industry Night. The annual event includes a preparation workshop for students with resume, networking and other career tips. During the culminating Industry Night, 17 employers from across the aviation industry came to network with 300 student attendees, sharing career path details, scholarship opportunities, and career and internship information.

As an advocate for business aviation careers since he first sat in the cockpit of a large business jet in high school, Schmidt also organized a new Business Aviation Night that enabled students to connect with industry professionals and tour a Gulfstream G450 aircraft.

“My drive stems from the fact that when most students think about a career in aviation, they only think about the commercial airlines,” he explained. “I want them to see the opportunities that a career in business aviation can offer.”

Schmidt also completed two internships during his time at Ohio State, with the Schrager Hampson Aviation Insurance Group and NetJets. He is also the Massachusetts Business Aviation Association’s first student board member, where he helps inspire the next generation of aviation professionals.

After graduation, Schmidt plans to be a flight instructor while gaining the experience necessary to become a corporate pilot. He believes his time as a Buckeye aviator has prepared him to succeed professionally.

“Transferring to Ohio State has absolutely been one of the best decisions I have ever made,” Schmidt said. “The aviation faculty have helped me in my academic pursuits as well as supporting my career aspirations.”

Lauren Wagner

Lauren Wagner enrolled at Ohio State because she wanted to attend a big university with big resources. Since becoming a Buckeye, she has not only taken advantage of all that the university offers, but also works to increase the opportunities available to students who follow in her footsteps.

“I grew up in the backyard of Ohio State and wanted to go to a large university to have all the resources available,” she said. “I don't think any other university would have let me do all the activities that I want to do and also be able to have a degree that's worth so much. I'm really thankful for that opportunity.”

Wagner knew she wanted to be an engineer in the fourth grade. In high school, she decided to study environmental engineering to support her goal of working to fight climate change. She’s also pursuing a science and engineering in the public interest minor to enhance her ability to make an impact.

On campus, Wagner has been dedicated to enhancing the university’s sustainability efforts, for which she received a 2024 Outstanding Green Buckeye Award from the Office of Student Life.

During her sophomore year, she joined and now leads Sustainable Steps, a student organization that performs sustainability-focused community service on campus and beyond. Wagner was instrumental in establishing Ohio State’s Earth Day Festival, which has grown significantly under her leadership.

She also helped launch and is vice president of the university’s American Conservation Coalition chapter. As part of that work, she has written guest columns on environmental topics, including one on How Governor DeWine can prevent future methane leaks, which was published by the Columbus Dispatch. In addition, Wagner and her team earned third place in the 2024 Smart Campus Challenge for their campus uniform recycling proposal.

The driven environmental engineering major has also been an undergraduate research assistant and teaching assistant (TA) for the past two years. She became a TA to pay forward and help first-year engineering students who struggle as she did initially.

“I came in 2020, so the TAs were the fundamental part of my college experience. Without them, I do not think I would have been able to continue on in engineering, because it was such a difficult and hard time. They were the ones who motivated me to keep going,” Wagner explained. “So my goal was to be able to take complex engineering concepts and try to simplify them for students who didn't have that background.”

After graduation, Wagner will be an engineer at ms consultants in Columbus and plans to stay involved with the university’s sustainability movement.

by Candi Clevenger, College of Engineering Communications, clevenger.87@osu.edu