Jessica Oribabor wasn’t sure what she wanted to study when she applied to colleges, but she knew she wanted a school with good engineering and science programs and a lot of diversity, but not just in its people. “Cornell has a lot of diversity in its programs and colleges,” she says. “It has a good balance of engineering and liberal arts. Usually a university is just strong in one or the other.”

Having grown up near a busy highway in New Jersey, Jessica finds Ithaca peaceful in comparison. “That’s one of the things I like about Cornell,” she says. “It’s beautiful up here, so it’s a nice place to take those quiet moments and reflect.”

While some of her friends back home questioned Cornell’s remoteness, Jessica says they have the wrong idea. “People have this misconception that Ithaca is the middle of nowhere and it’s always winter,” she says, “but I’ve found there’s so much to do here, and you can’t lie out on the slope for three hours in the city.”

Cornell’s rigorous coursework is helping Jessica find her career path. “It’s definitely challenged me in the sense of what I really want to do,” she says. “I’m learning what my strengths are academically and to play to my strengths.”

Jessica has discovered that she likes doing research. She has worked with materials science engineering Professor Chekesha Liddell making crystals with unique photonic properties. They can function like a semiconductor, except that photons carry the data instead of electrons, which could make for faster and more efficient computers. “I never imagined myself doing what I’m doing,” she says. “I’m working with machines the names of which I probably couldn’t have even pronounced in high school.”

Jessica is currently conducting research with civil and environmental engineering professor Ruth Richardson trying to uncover why an increasing amount of vinyl chloride is showing up in drinking water. “We’re trying to figure out where the source is and what’s happening,” she says. They suspect it could be a byproduct of chlorine disinfection or it could be leaching from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes, so Jessica is studying leaching rates in the lab using water from Ithaca and a 6-inch sample of PVC pipe.

She hopes her research will help in her pursuit of a graduate degree. “I want to go to public health school and work with water quality and sustainability,” she says.

Her ultimate goal is to work internationally, perhaps in Africa—her father is from Nigeria and her mother is from Kenya. “I grew up with a strong cultural background and I want to go back to Kenya and do some work there to help local people benefit themselves,” she says.