When Noreen Rizvi ’09 ChE first walked into the room at Baan Nontapum, a government-run orphanage for more than 400 disabled children in Bangkok where she volunteered during summer 2007, she thought the young person in the bed before her was an 8-year-old boy. In fact, the person was a 25-year-old woman named Boom. Muscular dystrophy had contracted her muscles and severe mental disabilities made it impossible for her to speak. Seeing a young woman about her own age with such difficulties was hard for Rizvi. 

“When I found out she was 25, it was very shocking for me at first, and it took me a few minutes to not react in a way that would be offensive,” said Rizvi. “It was very hard for me to see the conditions of some of the children at Baan Nontapum. As I got to know each child, I became more accustomed to their handicaps. Toward the end of my trip, the same children that once intimidated me had become some of my closest friends.”

Rizvi spent a lot of time with Boom, learning to feed her, care for her, and even managing to make a personal connection. It was a life-changing experience, one that challenged all of her intellectual abilities and also her heart. Her volunteer work in Thailand led her to be named one of Cornell’s “Engineering Global Fellows,” part of a new effort to highlight the accomplishments of students who work, study, conduct research, or perform service learning abroad.

It might at first seem surprising to see a chemical engineering student spending her summer working with disabled children, but Rizvi is not your average student. She’s been drawn to medicine since she was a child, when she spent time with her grandmother, who was bedridden with severe rheumatoid arthritis. “My desire to help people stemmed from my feeling of helplessness,” says Rizvi. “Seeing my grandmother’s illness take over her lifestyle inspired me to do whatever possible to help others.”

Rizvi, the daughter of Cornell food science professor Syed Rizvi, began her path excelling in math and science classes at Ithaca High School. In her senior year, she spent most of each school day at Cayuga Medical Center, rotating throughout the hospital as a member of its “New Visions” career exploration program.
At Cornell, she has worked for Professor Jeff Varner’s research group in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, mathematically modeling prostate cancer cells, and also finds time to volunteer at Alterra, a local assisted living facility.

Rizvi understands that she may not be the most typical engineering student. She suspects she will be an “out of the box” engineer. She has a hard time imagining herself in a cubicle, working without people.

“I might not be designing energy plants,” she says, “but the way engineers think is very applicable to working with patients and solving problems.” She notes that chemical engineers are involved in the fields of pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, and prosthetics.

“My courses are very related to what I want to do,” says Rizvi. “I’ll learn about fluid flow in fluid mechanics class, and that can be modeled as the circulatory system in the human body, with the heart as a pump. The fields do overlap.”

Rizvi has also been careful to explore other paths while at Cornell, to try out different things. In summer 2008, she tested out the world of business and industry as a research and development intern with L’Oreal in Clark, N.J., working on hair instrumentation. But while she’s curious about business and has enjoyed her research with Varner, an M.D. seems much more likely in her future than a Ph.D. or an M.B.A.

“I love the concept of research and seeing how knowledge is created,” she says. “But I would like to go into a field that has the human touch. What draws me to medicine is the combination of the human element along with fundamental science and groundbreaking engineering. In Thailand, that’s especially what I learned about myself. Being with those children and seeing them smile is really what made me want to be there. Through volunteering, I have realized that the human element in such settings is irreplaceable.”