Meet Northeastern’s 2020 Schwarzman and Knight-Hennessy Scholarship Nominees

The Knight-Hennessy and Schwarzman Scholarships, which fund study at Stanford and within China’s Tsinghua University respectively, are among the newest and most prestigious postbaccalaureate awards in the world. They are fellowships designed with the 21st century in mind, seeking to identify and develop leadership for the challenges of the new millennium. This year Northeastern University nominated a talented and diverse slate of applicants for these extraordinary opportunities. These students and recent alumni embody the ambitions and ideals of Northeastern: creating knowledge, prizing truth, acting with courage. Read on to meet these exceptional young people.

Folashade Adewunmi CSSH’21
Major: Criminal Justice
Award Nomination: Schwarzman Scholarship

Sade Adewunmi has combined her academic study of criminal justice, her talents for rhetorical persuasion and visual communication, and her on-the-ground work with police departments, court offices, and public defenders to fashion a sophisticated vision for breaking racially disparate cycles of poverty, discrimination, and incarceration by teaching us to see each other, ourselves, and our society differently. Majoring in criminal justice with minors in journalism, rhetoric, and law and public policy, Sade has built a robust and diverse set of critical, communicative, and analytic skills. She is a three-time winner of the John. D. O’Bryant African American Institute’s Ronald E. Latham Oratory Competition and, as senior creative director of Northeastern’s campus fashion magazine, The Avenue, she strove to advance inclusion, rethink beauty, and expand representation. First at the central division of the Boston Municipal Court, where those accused of minor offenses encounter the complexities of the judicial process; then as an analyst at the Cambridge Police Department; and finally at the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office, Sade has used Northeastern’s experience-driven model of education to engage with the criminal justice system from all angles. These experiences inform her continuing drive to craft and share new narratives of equality, redemption, and justice.

Vidhan Bhaiya COE’20
Major: Chemical Engineering
Award Nomination: Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Embracing the essence of Northeastern’s innovation ecosystem, Vidhan has taken national and international opportunities to grow his skills and management capabilities in engineering and entrepreneurship. In his first year, he helped with logistics at an Israel Defense Force base camp as part of the Volunteers for Israel program. He took part in a summer program at the London School of Economics and Political Science then traveled to Spain for a Dialogue of Civilizations to study thermodynamics. As operations lead for IDEA, he helped manage the operations of more than 300 ventures; he’s currently on IDEA’s Board of Advisors. And as a global student ambassador, Vidhan works with alumni to increase Northeastern’s presence in India. With the support of Northeastern undergraduate research and creative endeavor grants and an interdisciplinary team of mentors, Vidhan founded the award-winning Dr. Brinsley, a company that manufactures high-performance, stylish diabetic footwear to help reduce foot amputations. Dr. Brinsley earned the Global Impact Award at the Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge, and Vidhan is one of BostInno’s 25 under 25. Dr. Brinsley shoes are already sold in more than 85 hospitals and clinics on two continents.

Sathin Chuajedton DMSB’21
Major: International Business
Award Nomination: Schwarzman Scholarship

Sathin believes bolstering small, local entrepreneurship can be a key strategy for closing the income inequality gap and fostering sustainable, prosperous communities. Sathin grew up in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in an entrepreneurial family; his grandmother was one of the first Thai agricultural traders to do business with China. At Northeastern, Sathin majors in international business, with concentrations in supply chain management and entrepreneurship and a minor in economics. He has worked as an inventory analyst for the online retailer Wayfair, in sales management for wongnai.com in Bangkok, and in information systems for SS&C Eze Software. Sathin also studied abroad in Beijing, focusing on economics and Mandarin language at Tsinghua University. Through optimizing processes and investing in people, Sathin hopes to empower new generations of entrepreneurs in developing economies to increase standards of living and promote sustainable development.

Dayina Connie E CSSH’19
Major: Economics
Award Nomination: Schwarzman Scholarship

Growing up in Taiyuan, a city of 4.2 million about 300 miles outside Beijing, Connie became accustomed early to pursuing opportunities far afield: after attending boarding school in Shanghai, she moved on to high school in the United Kingdom, and then to Northeastern as a University Scholar and Honors student. Embracing Northeastern’s international reach, Connie studied disarmament policy at the United Nations in Geneva and consulted with social enterprises in South Africa. Even as she developed this global perspective, however, Connie continually applied her growing knowledge and expertise to the issues she first confronted in Taiyuan, watching her parents build their self-made business. Seeking a way to pair the acumen gained from her economics major and her co-ops at companies like State Street with her aspiration to promote sustainable and equitable development solutions, Connie served as president of NUImpact, Northeastern’s student-driven impact investing initiative. Under Connie’s leadership, NUImpact established an impact fund with a target of $250,000 for students to invest in local sustainable enterprises. Inspired by this success, Connie aspires to a career at the intersection of public policy, social impact, and financial services.

M. Luc Henriquez COS’21
Major: Linguistics and Psychology
Award Nomination: Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Luc Henriquez aims to reveal the role of language in creating and communicating identity as we move toward a future in which gender is increasingly understood in terms beyond the binary. Luc’s research interest is in the sociolinguistics of gender and sexuality, particularly how queer and trans identities are enacted through language and how language mediates social perceptions of gender and sexual identity. A series of in-depth research experiences helped Luc achieve this focus. At Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Luc worked with mouse models of multiple sclerosis and type I diabetes. Luc next joined the Music, Mind, and Brain Group at Goldsmiths, University of London, contributing to a number of studies on the relationship between music and cognition. Since 2019, Luc has worked at the Conceptual Organization, Reasoning, and Education (CORE) Lab of Northeastern professor John Coley, conducting experiments and also serving full-time for six months as a research coordinator. Currently, Luc is working with the Psycholinguistics and Language Development Research Group at Germany’s Technische Universität Kaiserslautern. Continuing a longtime involvement in theatre, Luc is a member of Northeastern’s activist theatre troupe, Acting Out, having served as dramaturg for Lysistrata.

Diego Rivera COE’21
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Award Nomination: Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Diego is a leader advancing us toward a more just and sustainable world through his sophisticated research on new materials for green energy as well as his advocacy for more inclusive and equitable approaches to engineering education and advancement. These two inseparable strands of Diego’s commitment embody his complex and comprehensive vision of the greater good, in which our society’s technological progress enables truly broad-reaching security and prosperity. Diego has researched magnetic microwires in the lab of Distinguished University Professor and Cabot Professor Laura Lewis, grid-scale battery technology at Form Energy, and higher-efficiency industrial processes at Via Separations. As president of the Northeastern chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), Diego fostered community and connections, linking his peers to one another in networks of mutual support and building bridges to potential employers and mentors. Diego’s broad vision of community service has also extended to developing and leading multiple Alternative Spring Break service and learning trips.

Daniel Sneyers Pont COE’21
Major: Industrial Engineering
Award Nomination: Schwarzman Scholarship

Daniel is a Galante Engineering Business Fellow who will receive both a BS and MS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Born in Spain and raised in Brazil, he taught himself Italian before going on a Dialogue of Civilizations to Italy so that he could truly connect with the people and culture. In his first global co-op with Bain & Company in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he worked on strategy consulting projects with Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish clients in their native tongues. At a later co-op at Apple, Daniel interacted with colleagues and vendors worldwide. He is the founder and past president of the Northeastern University Consulting Club, having grown the group to almost 1,000 members. He spent a semester raising $40,000 and coordinating university resources to bring the largest Brazilian undergraduate student conference in the world—the BRASA Summit—to Northeastern. Daniel was named a Presidential Global Fellow in 2019.

Haley Weinstein COE’21
Major: Electrical Engineering
Award Nomination: Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Haley seeks to radically rethink the order of things by undoing some familiar binaries that have structured our lives—both building futuristic quantum computing tools, and rebuilding the fields that produce these tools by putting pressure on the existing dualities of gender, race, and class that structure them. Inspired by the radical empowerment espoused by the riot grrrl movement in punk rock, Haley has dared to push the boundaries of what is conventionally considered possible or impossible—for girls and women to achieve, or for computers to perform. Haley will receive a combined BS/MS degree in electrical engineering, with a focus on computational data analytics and signal processing. Over nearly two years of combined internships and co-ops at MITRE Corporation, Haley contributed to high-level work for the federal government, and at SpaceX she has worked on projects including spaceflight engines and global satellite wi-fi. A passionate multi-instrumentalist, Haley won the Husky Startup Challenge with “Diminuendo,” a system she invented that uses active-noise-cancelling technology to allow musicians to practice anywhere with minimal disruption to neighbors.