“This is where I want to be,” Paul says as he joins his engineering colleagues, down the hall from the janitor’s closet which once held the keys to his success.
Nothing Stops Sabrina
By Rachael Tiehel
Many kids are born with a natural curiosity about the world. For six-year-old Sabrina Rosa- Ortiz, the science lab her father built so she could run mini experiments would pave the way to her STEM career at Northrop Grumman. Though that road was not easy, Sabrina decided long ago that she’d use her knowledge to pay her dad back someday.
Sabrina’s dad enlisted in the United States armed forces when she was young. Being active-duty from 1982 to 2022, he was moving to different duty stations, and she missed being with him, but felt his dedication to her education every time she toyed with science in her lab.
This Story Begins in Puerto Rico
Sabrina grew up in Puerto Rico, and even though money was tight, her parents always found a way to encourage their children to explore the world and seize every opportunity, especially when it came to their education.
In school, Sabrina took to physics, and in high school she started doing research for the University of Puerto Rico while working towards her diploma. Fortunately, the two schools were located directly next door to each other.
At just 17 she published a research paper on Carbon Nanotubes and Actuators, a major step towards cost-effective, water-proof wearable devices we use today to monitor personal health data. This was just the first of many professional accomplishments for Sabrina.
While completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Puerto Rico, different summer internships in the United States popped up and Sabrina took full advantage - studying at University of Pennsylvania, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Vermont and Princeton, while completing research in optics and physics. Thanks to an American Physics Society scholarship, she traveled back and forth from the U.S., eventually graduating in 2016.
She moved to the U.S. that fall, having been accepted to the University of South Florida (USF). One week before classes started, she was informed her acceptance was being revoked. She flew to the school to speak to the department chair of the Electrical Engineering program, thinking this had to be a mistake. She was told that she would need to take additional classes before enrolling in the program, so she stayed in the area to take the courses and conduct research on the side.
This could have been a huge blow to her confidence after moving her entire life to a new place, only to be told she could not begin the journey her heart was set on, but it didn’t stop Sabrina.
