Mercy Kyatha Awarded AAUW International Fellowship and Google Lime Scholarship
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Mercy Kyatha, a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department, recently received two prestigious recognitions: an International Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and a Google Lime Scholarship.
AAUW International Fellowships have been granted since 1917 and are one of the world's oldest awards for women's graduate education. The program provides support for women pursuing full-time graduate or postdoctoral study in the United States who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents and who intend to return to their home countries after graduation to pursue their careers. Doctoral recipients of the fellowship receive $25,000 from the AAUW to pursue innovative research and community projects.
The Google Lime Scholarship, presented by Google in conjunction with Lime Connect, is intended to help students become leaders in computing and technology by breaking down traditional barriers of entry into these fields. Scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence and demonstrated leadership. Each recipient receives $10,000 for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Before entering the Ph.D. program at UMass Amherst in 2021, Kyatha graduated with honors from the African Leadership University with her Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Power Systems. She also completed internships at the Kenya Electricity Generating Company and African Leadership X. She now works as a research assistant in ECE assistant professor Dr. Jay Taneja’s lab, Systems Towards Infrastructure Measurement and Analytics (STIMA), which focuses on smart electricity grids in sub-Saharan Africa, among other topics.
Kyatha was drawn to ECE, and STIMA specifically, based on research interests that were sparked during her childhood in Kenya. She spent part of her childhood in Makueni, where her family did not have access to electricity, before moving to Kiambere, home of the Seven Forks Dams, the largest and oldest hydroelectric dams in Kenya. In Kiambere, her family did have access to electricity, and this contrast gave her a firsthand appreciation for the profound impact that electricity can have on communities. Furthermore, she lived in the staff quarters of the Seven Forks Dams, where she often overheard electrical engineers talking about their work, which provided an early curiosity about electrical engineering.
Kyatha’s curiosity deepened when she was put in charge of paying her family’s electricity bills, which required her to make trips to the Kenya Power and Lighting Company. There, she encountered long lines of people who had come to appeal their bills. These appeals were understandable; electricity bills in the area fluctuated wildly from month to month, even when there was no significant change in electricity consumption behavior. This sparked Kyatha’s interest in developing affordable electricity management solutions, which became Kyatha’s Undergraduate Honors project at the African Leadership University.
Kyatha’s research extends to Internet of things (IoT) systems, which is another interest that stems from her life experience. Following a soccer accident, Kyatha was diagnosed with epilepsy. In an effort to avoid having seizures in public or dangerous situations, she began thinking about developing affordable ways of predicting when a seizure might occur, including by using sensors to track her heart rate and aura symptoms. Although that specific plan never came to fruition—fortunately, it never had to, because she was able to find an effective medication instead—her interest in sensor systems soon found an entirely different outlet.
After she happened to see the highlights from a Formula One race, Kyatha became fascinated by the frenetic yet precise work of the pit crew. She learned that Formula One vehicles carry over 300 sensors that collect and transmit data to the pit crew, which informs the crew’s decisions about how to adjust the vehicle to maximize success. For Kyatha, this represents a unique embodiment of IoT: data-driven decisions occurring in real-time.
After UMass, Kyatha hopes to gain experience by working in Formula One—so that she can interact with those complex sensor systems up-close—and ultimately, she hopes to return to Kenya to work as a researcher on electricity demand forecasting.
(December 2022)