What is the common thread between engineering, public health and global affairs? Ask Ryan Alezz, a 2025 graduate from the University's Whiting School of Engineering, who was named a 2026 Schwarzman Scholar. Through this fellowship, he will travel to China for a year-long, fully funded master's in global affairs at Tsinghua University. In an interview with The News-Letter, Alezz looked back on his time at Hopkins, reflecting on how it culminated in his selection for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
When asked what piqued his interest in the intersection of engineering and healthcare, he recounted his time as a freshman at Pennsylvania State University. There, he was a research assistant in a chemical engineering lab focused on the design of filters for pharmaceutical applications. When he transferred to Hopkins during his sophomore year, he built on this experience by joining a lab focused on pharmaceutical production, which led him to a research and development process engineer internship at Eli Lilly, a multinational pharmaceutical company.
In his sophomore year, he actively began pursuing experiences in global health. He joined the Hopkins Emergency Response Organization (HERO), inspired after witnessing them at work firsthand when he had to call HERO for a friend. He was also selected for Hopkins Community Connection (HCC), a program he applied for since he had to rely on similar social support programs during his freshman summer, when he experienced a period of food and housing insecurity at Penn State. In HCC, he worked as a community health worker, addressing the needs of the Baltimore community.
It was this diversity of experiences that led him to think about what filled his day with joy and what didn't.
"It was very removed from the impact that I felt like I wanted to make. And those experiences as an EMT and as a social worker or community health worker really stuck with me, and I was sitting there in the lab or at work, and I was like ‘I wish I was interacting with someone right now,’" Alezz reflected.
This introspection led him to explore other research types with a quest to find opportunities where he didn't work in isolation and could see the real-time implications of his work, specifically in the global health space.
"And so I joined a lab at the Hopkins Hospital called the Global Alliance of Perioperative Professionals. It's a lab mixed with a non-profit that does [essentially] medical infrastructure work in Sub-Saharan Africa," Alezz said.
Some of the things he did with this team included installing medical oxygen generators and solar panels, outfitting hospitals with piping systems, and training locals to use the medical equipment. As part of his project, he also collaborated with policymakers, including the Ministry of Health, and had the opportunity to speak with the First Lady of Gambia.
"That was engineering, that was international development, and that was healthcare... I realized that I needed to learn more about policy," Alezz explained, prompting him to apply for the Schwarzman Scholarship.
Alezz pointed out that when one looks back on his experiences, they seem to form a cohesive story.
"Throughout the years, it was just me getting involved in [like] things I was interested in…I explored my passions, and it [kind of] fell into place, which was nice," Alezz remarked.
This observation is a good reminder to enjoy the journey and not get fixated on the outcome. Speaking of journeys, when asked how he balanced being a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering major and pre-med student, he noted that engineering was what he naturally gravitated toward because he enjoyed applying a problem-solving mindset. His pre-med, memorization-intensive classes were the ones that challenged him, keeping him striving for more.
He also noted that his engineering classes allowed him to partake in projects he would never have had the chance to do otherwise. In 'Multidisciplinary Engineering Design', his team worked with nurses from the Cardiovascular Surgical Intensive Care Unit to design a simulation to train them to use pacemakers. It is these unique opportunities that have equipped him with a perspective that not many other pre-med students get.
Alezz was an active member of JHUMA, the Johns Hopkins University Muslim Association, which welcomed him with open arms during his sophomore year, which he describes as “freshman year part two” as a transfer student. They introduced him to and helped him with his applications for organizations like HERO. In his junior year, he helped JHUMA build partnerships with Masjid Ul Haqq and the Islamic Society of Baltimore, culminating in his election as JHUMA's president, where he worked to institute daily iftars at Hopkins during Ramadan.
Balancing this multitude of commitments was no joke.
"It's just a matter, for me at least, of sitting down every day and thinking 'What do I want to accomplish today? What is the most important thing to do?'" Alezz mentioned.
He acknowledged that he often overcommitted, but by prioritizing what mattered to him, he was able to find the motivation and energy to keep pushing.
"That didn't mean that I didn't have to take some days off, and be like, oh whoops, I can't go to class today, can't do anything today. This is going to be my rest day," Alezz said.
Mentors, from physicians to doctoral students to undergrads, were pivotal to Alezz's success. Sharing why he wanted to do something helped him glean valuable insights from these mentors. For instance, a friend at JHUMA helped him find global health research opportunities after Alezz told him wet-lab research felt isolating. It was these very same relationships that helped him secure letters of recommendation for the Schwarzman Scholarship. Samson Jarso from the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design helped him navigate the global health space, and Ryan Calder, director of the Islamic Studies Program at Hopkins, became a close connection through JHUMA.
As Alezz looks towards the future, he continues to ask himself about the impact he wants to make and how he can achieve it by taking small steps every day. Right now, he is finishing his medical school applications, hoping to attend medical school after his fellowship. In the long term, he is interested in bridging his policy, medical and engineering backgrounds to make as significant an impact as possible.
In the near future, he looks forward to traveling in China, something the Schwarzman Scholarship emphasizes. Like his engineering projects, he hopes to learn experientially by studying Mandarin, talking to people, and, of course, trying new food.
