Students Biographies
FGV STUDENTS
Ana Bonomi
Ana Bonomi is a visiting student at MIT working with CoLab (Community Innovators Lab). She is supporting their projects in Brazil, especially focusing on income generation potential for waste vegetable oil. She is currently majoring in Economics with focuses in environmental and energy at Fundação Getúlio Vargas - Sao Paulo, a top-5 Business School in Brazil. She will contribute with her local knowledge of the catadores’ economic, political and social situation, as she has worked with cooperatives since 2007.
MIT Students
Samantha Fox
Samantha Fox graduated from MIT in June 2010 with a Bachelor's degree in environmental engineering and a minor in environmental public policy. She has been a member of Biodiesel@MIT since the spring of 2007 and is familiar with both the logistics and the process of converting vegetable oil into biodiesel. She acts as the group organizer, through planning meetings and delegating tasks, while also participating in the planning of the project.
Sara Barnowski
Sara Barnowski graduated from MIT in June 2010 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Engineering and with a minor in Environmental Public Policy. She was the president of Biodiesel@MIT from 2009 to 2010, a group operating a biodiesel processor that converts used vegetable oil into fuel for the campus shuttles. She has also had international development experience in Peru as part of a D-Lab dissemination course. Her role in the project is to provide logistic, technical, and planning assistance.
Hossam EL-Asrag
Hossam El-Asrag is currently a post-doctoral associate at MIT’s department of Mechanical Engineering. Previously, in 2007, Hossam earned his masters and PhD in Aerospace Engineering form Georgia Institute of Technology in the field of turbulent reactive flow modeling and simulation. And in 2009, he completed a two-year Post Doctoral fellowship at the Stanford Center of Turbulence Research. His research focuses on introducing new techniques and methodologies to model flows in different energy conversion systems, including gas turbine engines, internal combustion engines, gasifiers, and energy reactors.
Ana Luisa Santos
Ana Luisa Santos received an MS degree from the MIT Media Lab in 2009. She previously received MSc and BEng degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her experiences with international development and appropriate technologies span from co-leading an MIT D-Lab field study to rural Brazil to actively contributing to humanitarian initiatives with the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She is currently working on the Humanitarian Technology Challenge, a joint project between the IEEE and the United Nations Foundation focused on developing and implementing technological solutions to selected humanitarian challenges in developing countries. She will contribute to planning and logistics for The Grease Project.
Angela Hojnacki
Angela Hojnacki is a junior at MIT, studying Mechanical Engineering and Urban Studies and Planning, with focuses in energy and environmental issues. She joined Biodiesel@MIT last year and will serve as president for the 2010/2011 school year. Angela works on research and implementation for the Grease Project in Brazil.
