For demonstrating outstanding scholarship, leadership, and service at the Georgia Institute of Technology, senior undergraduate student Shelbe Johnson has won the 2022 Helen Grenga Outstanding Woman Engineer Award from the Women in Engineering (WIE) program at Georgia Tech.

“Shelbe is a stellar student in the classroom, a promising researcher, and she has been a true change-maker on campus, for which she was recognized with the campus Diversity Champion award last year. I believe that she represents everything the Helen Grenga Award stands for,” said Professor Victor Breedveld, associate chair of the undergraduate program at Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE).

Future Plans

Johnson plans to earn her PhD in chemical engineering after graduating from Tech in August 2022. She has earned admission to all 11 top doctoral programs to which she applied, and she will attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She will begin her doctoral studies with a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which includes three years of financial support (annual stipend: $34,000).

Johnson, who plans to become a professor after completing her doctoral studies, said she was inspired to pursue a career in science after a beloved high school English teacher in Columbus, Georgia, succumbed to cancer.

“I knew I was too squeamish to go into medicine, but I knew that I wanted to equip doctors with the tools they need to help people – affordable tools that can help people all over the world,” she said.

Johnson, winner of ChBE’s Outstanding Junior Award in 2021, decided to pursue her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering because of her initial interest in the pharmaceutical industry.

Research Experience

Johnson said she learned how much she enjoyed research during her freshmen year, when she became an undergraduate research assistant in Professor Mark Styczynski’s Lab. Since then, she has worked with his team to develop a field-friendly homocysteine biosensor to increase healthcare accessibility.

“Shelbe’s work overall has been a substantial contribution to our group’s efforts,” Styczynski said.

Her presentation on her lab research with biosensors won first place at the College of Engineering’s Undergraduate Research Poster Competition in spring 2021 and a second-place poster prize at the national 2021 AIChE Annual Student Conference.

“The only reason she does not already have a publication from her work in our group is that the Covid disruption set the homocysteine project back,” Styczynski said. “Now, however, she is helping to drive the homocysteine project to completion, with a manuscript to be submitted in the near future.”

Johnson has bolstered her research experience with internships at ExxonMobil and Procter & Gamble, and branched into private equity consulting in summer 2021 with an internship at Bain & Company, advising on investment and growth strategies in health care.

“I’d done a one-week program on building entrepreneurial leaders the year before, which led to the offer from Bain,” she explained. “I wanted to get some business experience, because I knew I’d pursue a PhD and be technically focused for my whole career.”

Campus Leader

On campus, Johnson has demonstrated commitment to helping other students succeed as a team leader in the GT 1000 course, a member of the Peer-Led Help Desk, and a mentor in the ChBE Success Program that supports underrepresented minority students. In 2022, she received ChBE’s Outstanding Course Assistant Award, which is determined by student voting.

In fall 2021, she won Georgia Tech’s Diversity Champion honor for her multiple efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus and beyond. For example, she helped create the Black Entrepreneurship Summit to highlight student business leaders, and served as a sophomore advisor for the campus chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers and social media chair for the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers chapter.

As a member of the African-American Student Union, Johnson served as co-chair for Black History Month, leading the planning of an event that included activist Angela Davis as a speaker and a collaboration with the Georgia Tech Library to feature Black artists in a campus gallery.

She also serves on ChBE’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, working with faculty, students, and staff to develop initiatives. In addition, Johnson is associate justice on Georgia Tech’s Judiciary Cabinet, hearing cases of non-academic misconduct, as well as president of the Adventist Christian Fellowship on campus.

Off campus, Johnson serves the community as a volunteer at Chastain Horse Park, helping children with disabilities learn how to ride horses.

At the WIE Banquet where Johnson accepted the Grenga Award, Professor Breedveld told attendees, “Her ability to facilitate growth in others and seemingly effortlessly guide them towards greater awareness and appreciation of the need to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion is simply awe-inspiring.”