Barbara Jaramillo is a 2021 Canada Student Merit Award winner. She achieved this award for obtaining the highest standing of her class in the fourth and final year of her degree. Here is a brief biography of the winner.
"Finding the right career path can be a road full of twists and turns. I am Barbara Jaramillo, candidate to the Biotechnology Engineering Profession at the Université de Sherbrooke who initially thought of becoming an architect. Soon later, I understood that I wanted concrete answers, a product of scientific analysis; reasoning as well as flexibility in terms of scope of employment.
With that in mind, I decided to take as much time as necessary to find a program that I could feel passionate about and that would allow me to fully develop my skills. While I was taking a few courses as an undergraduate student in Ecology at UQAM, the road led me to Biotechnology Engineering at the Université de Sherbrooke in which, thanks to the Work Study Program, I was able to explore different branches of the profession. This is how I was able to experience firsthand – through internships – the chemical industry of hydrogen peroxide production, the food industry of juice production, the paper industry, and the technology sector that develops projects to produce biofuels from biomass. Following my high performance in all of them, in addition to being awarded 4 times for academic excellence, Enerkem extended me a full-time job offer as a candidate to the engineering profession which I gladly accepted.
I am a person constantly striving to be better and ready to take on any technological challenge seeking the optimization of natural resources to reduce the environmental impact on the planet. I am convinced that as professionals in this field we have a huge responsibility in mitigating the environmental degradation. Lastly, I believe that I have finally found the right path that inspires me to achieve greater things in the future."
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