Hallo (Hello!) My name is Sarah DiIorio and I’m 22 years old. I am originally from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and I grew up loving books and playing lots of soccer. My grandparents all came to the U.S. from Italy, and through visiting my family in Italy I learned to enjoy exploring new cultures.
For college, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I went to school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (also called MIT) to study biological engineering. If you don’t know what a biological engineer does, I like to describe it as someone who solves problems in the human body. In college, I worked in a research lab for the first time. I fell in love with research because I liked finding new ways to use science to help others.
I decided to combine my love of exploring and research by applying for a Fulbright Fellowship in the Netherlands. For the next nine months, I will be in the city of Eindhoven, doing research at the Eindhoven University of Technology. In my Fulbright project I will be studying how to regrow cartilage, which is the covering on the ends of our bones that lets us move without pain). I hope to one day become a doctor so that I can continue work like this and help patients.
But first, I’m really looking forward to exploring the Netherlands this year and learning a lot through my project. I am excited to share my journey with you!
