Image by Ed Brennen Amazon scholarship recipients, from left, Destinee Jeanty, Mishel Duque Arana, Natemwa Kaoma and Selina Budu pose with computer engineering alumna Hetal Patel '04, third from right, and her Amazon colleagues, Scott Isabelle and Carlo Murgia, at the Meehan Student Center.
More than two decades after a research assistantship helped Hetal Patel ’04 pursue her graduate studies at UMass Lowell, she is returning the favor.
Patel, now an engineering manager at Amazon, helped create new $2,000 scholarships for UMass Lowell engineering students. The awards also connect recipients with Amazon employees for yearlong mentoring designed to prepare them for the company’s internship application process.
“I personally felt very grateful for what I got when I was researching here” at UMass Lowell, says Patel, who earned a master’s degree in computer engineering from the Francis College of Engineering. “I thought, ‘It’s my time to give back.’”
The inaugural scholarship recipients are sophomores Mishel Duque Arana (biomedical engineering), Destinee Jeanty (electrical engineering) and Selina Budu (computer engineering), along with junior Natemwa Kaoma (computer engineering).
As a graduate student, Patel received a research assistantship that supported her work on audio signal processing with Professors Charles Thompson and Kavitha Chandra at the Center for Advanced Computation and Telecommunications.
Image by Ed Brennen Computer engineering alumna Hetal Patel '04 tells students about her career path to Amazon during her recent visit to campus.
“Being a student, you are always short of money,” Patel says. “So if we can help take care of a little bit of the finance part, students can focus more on their studies.”
The scholarships are part of an Amazon diversity, equity and inclusion initiative focused on connecting students with financial support and career opportunities. Applicants must be currently enrolled undergraduates pursuing a STEM degree, maintain a minimum 3.0 GPA, qualify for financial aid and have at least a year remaining before graduation.
The students were selected by Chandra and Senior Associate Director of Financial Aid Michelle Smith. Chandra says the recipients stood out because of their academic work, community involvement and previous experiences at UML.
The scholarship recipients were recognized during a recent Career Services event hosted with Amazon at the Meehan Student Center. The event included demonstrations of Echo technology, information about Amazon internships and career opportunities, networking with Amazon employees and raffle giveaways.
Image by Ed Brennen UMass Lowell's first Amazon scholarship recipients learn more about the yearlong mentorship that comes with the award from Scott Isabelle, left, a principal audio research scientist at the company.
Kaoma serves as president of the RAMP Club and heard about the scholarship through the program. She is eager to learn more about Amazon’s work and career opportunities.
“Amazon has a lot of influence in the tech industry, so I’m really interested in hearing about that,” the Norwood native says.
Budu learned she had been nominated for the scholarship after conducting machine learning research with Chandra last summer.
“It was so surreal because I really did not expect it, especially coming from Amazon,” says Budu, a native of Ghana who now lives in Worcester.
Budu works part time in UML’s Information Technology office and hopes to learn more about automation engineering through the Amazon mentoring program. She says she has long been interested in working for the company.
Image by Ed Brennen Computer engineering alumna Hetal Patel '04 catches up with her former professor, Charles Thompson, during her visit to campus.
“My mom was super-excited,” Budu says. “The first thing she said was, ‘That’s going to save a lot of money.’”
Patel was born in Bilimora, India, and earned a bachelor’s degree in physics before coming to the United States for graduate school. Her interest in sound began with music: She learned to play the harmonium as a child and performed from a young age. Her father, a physics professor, encouraged her curiosity about how things worked.
At UMass Lowell, Patel connected her passion for sound with engineering research. Her master’s thesis used a computer model of the head-related transfer function, which describes how sound reaches the human ear. She developed software that allows listeners to experience spatial audio in real time.
Patel went on to work for several technology companies before joining Amazon, where she is currently an engineering manager in Dublin, California.
She hopes the scholarship and mentoring program will continue in future years and grow into a broader connection between Amazon and UMass Lowell students and faculty.
Image by Ed Brennen A student picks up an Amazon Echo Show device that she won as a raffle prize during the company's recent visit to campus.