ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2020
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. In the three months the application was open in 2020, 15,159 young leaders applied to join the Class of 2020 on 1,458 campuses across 135 nations. 80 campuses worldwide (just 6%) were selected to host the 1,000+ Millennium Fellows. The Class of 2020 is bold, innovative, and inclusive.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT VIRGINIA JIANG, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2020.
Columbia University | New York, United States | Advancing SDG 3 & UNAI 9
" I am excited to be part of the Millennium Fellowship so I can join a like-minded community of worldwide scholars and to dedicate myself to the interface of engineering and social justice to build technologies that solve real-world problems for the most marginalized. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Designing Proteins
Too often, corporate technologies ignore basic human needs in favor of what is profitable. Virginia's goal is to (1) create groundbreaking biotechnologies that serve unmet needs and (2) to put engineering knowledge into the hands of the people.
The aim is to develop at least one designed pilot catalytic protein by December, which will be an open-access technology. Additionally, Virginia aim to teach at least one class of 25 underrepresented engineering students about the methods and principles.
About the Millennium Fellow
Virginia Jiang studies chemical engineering at Columbia University (2021), where they research in the Banta Lab for protein and metabolic engineering as it relates to designing novel clean energy sources. Jiang is involved in social justice and activism work, where they analyze social inequity and provide data-driven solutions as it relates to gentrification and violence in Harlem, New York. A life-long curiosity in the workings of the natural world drove Jiang to pursue a career in the chemical engineering field, and they are excited to continue to tackle global problems as a Millennium Fellow.
