Meet Paula Zubiri, a sophomore Mechanical Engineering major from Montevideo, Uruguay. Her enthusiasm and kindness is evident in everything she does. On campus, Paula is involved in PACE events, as she enjoys community service, specifically helping restore the parks in Pittsburgh. She’s also a Resident Assistant for Morewood E-Tower. She decided to be an RA because she can help people achieve things they don’t think they could accomplish by themselves. By being an RA, she is able to be a resource for empowerment and a caring person that her residents can rely on.
Paula also participates in several hack-a-thons, namely Build18, which is a week-long hack-a-thon intended to give students a chance to create something. Paula has participated for the past two years at CMU. Her freshman year, her team created a “wireless piano” called Piairno, which is a glove that plays tones on a virtual piano. This year, she created a Thor’s hammer, which requires a user to scan their ID to deactivate the magnet.
In high school, she founded a chapter of a non-profit organization called Days for Girls International that provides women in impoverished countries with reusable menstruation kits. She has been working with this organization for the past four years, and her chapter alone has helped over 2500 women. Now, Paula helps her mom run the chapter and still works on it when she goes back home to Irvine, California, and is trying to start a chapter on campus.
In her free time, Paula likes to knit, spend time at Dobra Tea House (and also just drink tea in general), walk around downtown Pittsburgh, and spend time with her friends. She also likes to cook, and she especially loves to bake. For the next year, she’ll be travelling the world as an au pair, visiting countries in Europe, Asia, and Central and South America.