Ann Johnson
Georgia Tech

Degree: B.S. in Biology

How did the Stamps Scholarship help shape your undergraduate experience?
Having the Stamps Scholarship gave me so many opportunities that would never have been possible otherwise, such as conducting penguin dialect research in Antarctica and a sanitation study in Mozambique.

Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your freshman self?
Do not avoid trying things because you are afraid to fail. You can learn a lot from failure and gain great experience from successes.

Who has had the greatest impact on you throughout your college career and how so?
My PI Dr. Joe Brown in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department here at GT. Dr. Brown demonstrates how being an empathetic and caring researcher turns research from data on the page into something that has a real impact in people’s lives. He inspired me to pursue environmental health research as my career in conjunction with working as a physician.

What’s your favorite Stamps Scholar memory?
Leading a group of incoming freshman Stamps Scholars backpacking in Croatia.

What comes next?
I received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct environmental health and medical anthropology research in Kanpur, India.

Please share your favorite inspirational quote.
“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” -Kurt Vonnegut