Senior profile: Heidi Ahmed

Whether it’s the dead of winter or the middle of finals week, Heidi Ahmed, SEAS ’11, always has sunshine in her voice and a spring in her step.

During her time at Columbia, she served as vice president of policy for the Engineering Student Council, director of the a cappella group Bacchante—and has been a smiling face and encouraging friend to many.

She said that her proudest moments at Columbia have been “when you realize that the work you’ve done within a group—whether it’s in class or in a club—has really helped to build a tangible sense of community and camaraderie.”

This summer Ahmed will be working in the biomedical engineering department, continuing to improve her senior design project—a neonatal vital signs monitor for low-income countries.

“The technology that we’ve developed is awesome—first place at a National Global Health Technologies competition, and the department’s Capstone Award—and we’re hoping to take it to Mulago Hospital in Uganda … this August. I’ll also be one of the instructors for the biomedical engineering high school course at SEAS in June and July,” she said.

In August, she’ll return to her home state of Iowa for medical school, a lifelong dream.

Ahmed said she was feeling especially nostalgic last week at a biomedical engineering dinner.

“We were all together for the last time, celebrating our survival of the last four years—through all of our suffering with projects and problem sets and endless studying, we managed to band together to form one of the closest communities I’ve ever been a part of, at a college with a reputation of lacking community,” she said.

During her time on ESC, Ahmed and others worked to pass gender-neutral housing, which allows any student, regardless of sex or gender, to live together in the same room.

“I loved being VP Policy this year, although I really wish I had been able to spend all of my time—rather than split it with classes—working on initiatives for the student body,” she said.

Ahmed says that while being around intelligent people all the time at Columbia has pushed her to think critically and perform to her highest potential, it has led her to another surprising revelation.

“Despite the fact that everyone at Columbia is brilliant, I realized that we’re all still wonderfully flawed humans who are silly and quirky and dorky. No amount of formidable intelligence can keep you from having fun, and this makes it so much easier to always act like yourself, regardless of who you’re with,” she said.

When asked if she has any advice for the class of 2015, Ahmed said that students should choose to do what they know they want to do.

“If you try to do things because only because others want you to, or because you think it’s what you should be doing, even if your heart tells you not to, you won’t be as happy. I tried not to let outside influences pressure my choices at Columbia, and so even when I’d be working on a project for the third all-nighter in a row, I was willing to keep working and try to have a happy face because I knew that what I was doing was important to me.”

sonalee.rau@columbiaspectator.com