Emma Zhu

Emma Zhu

Civil Engineering

Emma Zhu
She is a 12th grade student from Foxcroft School, Viginia. Passionate in civil engineering, she would like to work on a related research paper.



Based on her past experience working in a stream monitoring project conducted by her high-school team for an environmental NGO (Goose Creek), Emma would like to work on a multidisciplinary project which has both civil engineering and financial aspects.

University admission

UC San Diego


Scope of Civil Engineering Research

Overall structure

  • The course is aimed at working on the student’s interests. The program consists of 8 sessions in which natural risk modeling is presented gradually, from introductory concepts to a comprehensive overview of the discipline.
  • The student completes a project with the help of the mentor and presents it in the last session. Each session, the student has an assignment related to civil engineering field that she submits before the next lesson.

Learning objectives

  • The main goals of the program are to present useful knowledge within the student’s area of interest for her future career and discuss college matters that may arise. Learning objectives are that the student becomes familiar with the introductory elements of risk modelling including exposure, vulnerability and hazard.
  • In addition, the course aims that the student learns about available tools and data for risk assessments, risk concepts, and gets hand-ons experience in preparing GIS layers in the software QGIS and Excel.

What challenges did she face?

  • Emma had a few issues attempting her homework. But all these were resolved when she emailed her mentor for further clarification.


How did our program help her?

  • One of her goals was to complete a project in civil engineering before her college application to strengthen her portfolio.
  • Through the program, she learnt software skills such as QGis and complex commands in Excel.
  • The mentor had written a stellar letter of recommendation for Emma’s college application.


Matched professor in Civil Engineering:

Currently, the mentor teaches Natural Disaster Risk Modeling (Civil Engineering) and serves as an adjunct associate scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins University. In addition, he serves as the Principal Consultant at CREA Analytics, where he offers advice on risk science and engineering. He belongs to the American Wind Energy Association, the country’s leading trade group for the wind business.

She’s an independent and resourceful person that was able to tackle problems of software installation and operation. Also, she was not deterred by the difficulties of organizing the data for the analyses, a task which could be frustrating but it’s a part of engineering learning.

Associate Scientist and Professor from Johns Hopkins University


Excerpts from student’s civil engineering research

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