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As a teenager attending Denver’s East High School, Danielle Griego hadn’t really known what a career in engineering would be like. With her interest in physics, as well as biology and other sciences, she was advised to try it, so she applied to CU-Boulder on a friend’s recommendation. Four years later, Griego couldn’t be happier about her choice. “It’s all I could have hoped for—and even more,” she said. “I’ve always been into ‘save the planet,’ use less resources, recycle what you can…so learning more about how much energy buildings consume, I became interested in managing electrical and mechanical loads in buildings to conserve on energy resources. I’ve had a couple of different internships that have validated that it’s a good direction for me.” In summer 2005, Griego attended the five-week transitional Summer Bridge sponsored by the Multicultural Engineering Program. Through that experience, she became more familiar with the engineering disciplines and chose architectural engineering as her major. Recently, she spent a semester studying Spanish in Guadalajara, Mexico, to fulfill another goal. As a participant in the concurrent BS/MS program, she now expects to finish both her bachelor's and master's degrees by December 2010. After that, she envisions herself traveling to see more of the world and applying her engineering degree internationally—particularly in disadvantaged, third-world countries. With CU-Boulder’s strong curriculum in alternative energy technologies and efficient building design, Griego is poised to make an impact on the environment as well as people’s lives. Complementing her core knowledge in architectural engineering, she also has learned a lot about air quality control techniques, which she says could be important in working with people living in less advantaged conditions. She met CU Professor Mark Hernandez, an environmental engineer who specializes in indoor air quality, and came to work in his laboratory as a research assistant after first gaining some experience through the Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training (SMART) program. During her 10-week SMART internship in 2008, Griego helped to inventory greenhouse gas emissions in Central City and to recommend measures to reduce the community’s footprint. Now, her research with Hernandez focuses on the application of ultraviolet disinfection to an architectural “water feature” intended to improve building air quality. The water feature, which has been set up in the Engineering Lobby as a long-term experiment, is being studied to determine how well it removes particulates from the air and what can be done to keep the harmful substances from being released back into the air from the water. The first in her family to attend a four-year college, Griego says her parents and two older siblings are very proud and supportive. She has received several scholarships from college donors that have helped support her in reaching her goals. She also has been an active participant in the BOLD Center—a grouping of programs under the umbrella Broadening Opportunity through Leadership and Diversity—which she says provided a sense of community, friends, and a lot of good contacts with faculty and staff from whom she has received advice. Through the center, she also had an opportunity to give something back by serving as a role model for younger students on a field trip to the Royal Gorge—showing them by example that an engineering education is within reach for students from all backgrounds.
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