Edward Staats

Global Challenge: Sustainable Cities/Public Transportation

Bio:

Edward is continuing his journey through the Mathematics and Physics major at Tandon. He is also considering pursuing a minor in Transportation, which is also offered at Tandon. He has a passion for public transportation and wants to spend time studying it in a city that excels in it. He recently finished his study abroad semester in Shanghai, where he challenged himself with difficult math courses, as well as quantum computing and urban design courses. He is ready to be back at Tandon to finish out his major and minor requirements.

Edward has been involved in quite a few activities outside of his regular coursework. He is part of the mechanical design team for the VIP: Project Mjolnir, in which he designs parts for an open-source, adaptive mountain bike. He has also participated in events at the NYU Institute of Transportation Engineers, Tandon Math Club, and NYU Society of Undergraduate Physicists. Before coming to NYU, Edward worked as a cashier at his local grocery store, Lunds & Byerlys, where he gained experience in communication and customer support. After a semester in New York, he became a math tutor at Thinking Caps Group, where he would tutor middle school students to prepare them for the ISEE exams as well as help them in their math classes. Over the summer before his junior year, he got a teaching internship at Tech Tac Toe, where he taught STEM-based summer camps for elementary school students. These camps involved model rockets, drones, optimized paper airplanes, and LEGO RC cars. From these experiences, he gained leadership and teaching skills. Next summer, he hopes to have a more technical internship, in something such as engineering, transportation, or data analysis. After graduation, he aims to secure a job in one of these fields, or another one he is passionate about, such as clean energy. This passion is important to him because long-term, he wants to make a positive impact on the world, which is more important to him than money.

Edward studied abroad at NYU Shanghai, where he got to experience Chinese culture and travel throughout such a diverse country. He participated in the Language Peer Mentor Program, where he learned some Chinese while helping an NYU Shanghai student improve her English. This allowed him to speak simply to locals enough to get around China effectively. Exploring China changed Edward’s perspective on the country, as it was far less foreign to him than he thought it would be. His most ambitious adventure was when he and a friend rented a car in Xinjiang (far Western China) and drove up into the mountains, passing by some of the most beautiful landscapes he has ever seen. In China, he gained a much more thorough understanding of how 1.4 billion people live. Apart from his study abroad in Shanghai, he completed 4 other components in the past year, 3 of which were already mentioned above (Project Mjolnir, Thinking Caps Group, and Tech Tac Toe). The fourth was a volunteering opportunity he pursued in Cambodia. He volunteered at Marine Conservation Cambodia, where he stayed on a small, barely populated island. He helped research different marine mammals in the area, as well as different seagrasses, ran trash surveys, entered seagrass data and helped with collecting it, and earned his Perfect Buoyancy SCUBA certification.

To Edward, being a part of the GLASS program signifies a certain level of discipline and commitment to his studies as well as to the world. To be an effective member of GLASS, he believes he must yearn to apply his knowledge to help the world, and in this way be a global leader. GLASS has shown him that to work toward solving global challenges, we all have a part to play. People from all parts of the world need to be able to work together and recognize that some problems, such as climate change, are not just problems for harshly affected countries, but are problems that every country needs to work on. Climate change is the global challenge that resonates most with Edward, due it its vast scale and devastating effects. However, due to his passion for transportation and urban design, he aims to focus on sustainability within these fields. For this reason, UN Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities is most resonant with him. He hopes to travel to different communities around the world to learn about their sustainability practices as well as help these global communities become more sustainable. Climate change is a very global issue, so it is almost impossible to work on it without a global context.

Outside of academics, Edward enjoys biking, swimming, and exploring the city and the world.