A prestigious award for engineering graduates from her native country, the Lino de Pombo Award, awarded by the Colombian Society of Engineers, recognizes the outstanding achievements of CSE graduate student Maria Zapata. "Receiving the Lino de Pombo award as the best engineer graduating in 2023 at Colombia by the Colombian Society of Engineers is a true honor. It is a sign that perseverance and discipline pay off and that I am getting closer to my dream.” said Maria Zapata. In the fall, she will begin her Masters in Computer Science at USF CSE.
The Colombian Society of Engineers, established in May of 1887, is an academic and scientific non-profit, whose mission is to improve the quality of life and the well-being of humanity through of science and engineering. Within days of its founding, they handled problems like the railway route from Bogota to Magdalena River and many public and academic works. As part of its continuing mission to promote research and development of Engineering, it established the Lino de Pombo award nearly 40 years ago to encourage academic excellence.
Maria has dreamt of working at NASA since childhood, and that confident expectation has propelled her into a rigorously disciplined path through college. She took the first eight semesters of her degree in Systems Engineering from Uninorte, the main academic center of northern Colombia, and then took advantage of a special program. USF has a ‘Memorandum of Understanding, with Uninorte, whereby UG students from Uninorte transfer to USF CSE for one year to earn a BSCS and then potentially transition to a MSCS.
To read a full article about Maria’s achievements, including her Full Stack Development work at Advocate Health Advisors, read the article here.
See her LinkedIn profile Maria Zapata.