Congratulations to Maggy Harake, Michelle Huang, Audrey Shih & Kyra Yap: 2023 Chemical Engineering Service Award Winners

Congratulations to Maggy Harake, Michelle Huang, Audrey Shih & Kyra Yap for winning 2023 Chemical Engineering Service Awards!

The Chemical Engineering department has been fortunate to have a graduate student population that is involved and engaged as well as invested in the department’s culture, direction and future. This award honors and recognizes these significant contributions to the department - going above and beyond the scope of their normal research and studies to help ensure our community thrives.

Maggy Harake – Chemical Engineering Service Award

Maggy Harake ‘volunteers extensively and selflessly for both the chemical engineering department and her research group’. This year she was ‘heavily involved in the graduate recruitment student committee for ChE’. Maggy also serves as the group organizer in her research group, organizing group meetings, social events, and many other activities. She is highly responsible and constantly looks out for others. She is ‘a big reason behind the positive culture in my group as well as in the ChemE department’.

Michelle Huang – Chemical Engineering Service Award

During Michelle's tenure as Vice President of GSAC (which has covered 2 school years), ‘she has made a lasting impression on the graduate student community at Stanford ChemE’. She organized a ‘seminar series for first year graduate students and faculty members to allow students to be able to more easily approach faculty members in the department and feel more welcome here. She also led the mentoring program, facilitating relationships between upper years and lower years so that the flow of knowledge and advice continues’. She also was crucial to the success of this year's ChemE Convocation, ‘which brought together the whole ChemE community-both currently at Stanford and beyond’.

Audrey Shih - Chemical Engineering Service Award

As an executive member of GSAC, Audrey has been ‘ an advocate for the needs and concerns of ChemE graduate students and serves as a liaison between the student community and the Department leadership’. As a first-year mentor in the Department, Audrey provides guidance and support to ‘first-year students as they select research groups and adjust to graduate school life’. In addition to supporting current students, Audrey also ‘supports prospective students by welcoming them as a recruitment weekend volunteer and prospective student buddy for the past three years’. Outside of Chemical Engineering, Audrey is also a ‘Community Associate working with the Graduate Life Office to plan welcome events, orientation programs, and multicultural, educational, and social events throughout the year to foster a sense of community across all departments’.

Kyra Yap - Chemical Engineering Service Award

Kyra has been ‘one of the great DEI champions in our community, leading one of the most impactful outreach efforts that our department has ever been involved in’. She is the leader of ‘the Stanford Summit Tahoma Expedition Program (SSTEP), a program that offers a deep engagement with a local high school in San Jose (Summit Tahoma) with a student body coming from groups that are largely under-represented in STEM’. This program has been highly impactful for those students, opening their eyes towards new opportunities. Kyra as the leader of SSTEP has ‘demonstrated extraordinary commitment and leadership in service of our community.’