Daniel Ocasio Selected as Class of 17 Valedictorian

Fri, 05 May 2017 14:34:34 -0400

Congratulations to Daniel Ocasio, who will deliver the Valedictory Address at the May 25 undergraduate commencement ceremony. Daniel is a Chemical Engineering major, a Meyerhoff Scholar, and a member of the Honors College who has earned a 4.0 GPA and a Spanish certificate at UMBC. He is also a recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship.

During his time as a student, Daniel founded a UMBC chapter of the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers that has provided a supportive community for Latino/a students. He also co-founded Achievement and Inspiration through Mentorship (AIM), which develops East Baltimore middle school students and their mentors both academically and personally.

Daniel is a first generation college student who has done research in the laboratory of Dr. Lee Blaney, and in laboratories at the University of California, Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan. Daniel's passion is working on the inequality of resource accessibility in the world. Specifically he plans to be part of the solutions needed to provide safe water to the hundreds of millions of individuals across the globe presently without it on a daily basis. To that end, Daniel will pursue his Ph.D. in environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.