In the Santa Barbara home where Margherita Scussat and her younger brother grew up, their Italian-immigrant parents regularly made tomato sauce from scratch and whipped up nutritious plates of fish and fresh vegetables. Immersed in a bilingual culture with an emphasis on healthy diet and lifestyle, Scussat has always loved cooking and is intrigued by technologies that can help people live healthier lives.
Now a rising fourth-year bioengineering student at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, Scussat not only speaks Italian and English but has also taken up Spanish. She spent a semester last year studying in Madrid, Spain, through UCLA’s Education Abroad Program and more recently traveled to Guatemala, where she spent two weeks living with a host family. This summer, she is working as a research intern at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, studying organoid tissue engineering for cancer treatment.
“Health is a universal concern, and many bioengineering innovations are designed to improve quality of life for people around the world,” Scussat said. “Developing effective healthcare solutions requires not only technical expertise but also an understanding of the cultural, economic and social contexts in which they will be used.”
