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Marshall Scholar hopes to make computer technology accessible in developing countries

The journey of Sarah Airey toward studying artificial intelligence in Great Britain began when a little girl discovered the joy of applying crayons to scrap paper in Roanoke, Va.

Her parents encouraged her interest in art; drawing and painting taught her to seek out creative solutions and to value aesthetics. Volunteering as a museum guide when she was a teenager piqued her interest in African Art.

In high school, she realized that "the creative element can be applied to math." Her burgeoning interest in math led her to the Roanoke Valley Governor's School for Science & Technology, where she became intrigued with computers. She followed that curiosity to the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Virginia Tech and discovered how computers work.

Her desire to share her knowledge of computers and to learn more about African art, along with her outstanding academic record, earned her the University Honors Program Daughtrey Scholarship and a summer in Ghana. There, she developed her next goal: to help create computer software that will mesh with the cultures of developing countries.

Airey's knowledge, talents, and goals culminated recently in two well-deserved honors.

She is one of only 40 undergraduates in the United States this year to receive a British Marshall Scholarship, worth about $50,000 for graduate study in the United Kingdom, and one of only 20 students selected for USA Today's 2001 All-USA Academic First Team.

"Sarah's accomplishments and talents extend well beyond traditional academic disciplines to art, community improvement, the promotion of cultural diversity, athletics, and involvement in national and international affairs," wrote Eric Watkins, an associate professor of philosophy, in nominating Airey for the Daughtrey Scholarship.

When Airey was a freshman, Watkins hesitated to allow the young engineering student to enroll in his history of modern philosophy course. He relented, however, and was dazzled by the first paper she wrote for the class: "I simply have never seen such extraordinary breadth of interests and abilities coupled with the ambition to bring it all together into a coherent whole."

A student of creative writing in high school and college, Airey was an editor, director, and contributing author of Things Look Different Now, a drama that aired on Roanoke Public Access TV. It was performed in the Roanoke city schools and incorporated into the city's eighth-grade curriculum. At Virginia Tech, she has occasionally written op-ed columns for the Collegiate Times.

Delving into philosophy and expressing herself on paper may have come naturally to Airey, but as a student at Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, she realized that she would need to work at public speaking in order to communicate her ideas effectively. She joined the school's debate teams, where she received a varsity letter as Most Outstanding Debater and twice was selected the Extemporaneous Speaking District Champion.

While a student at Virginia Tech, she trained as a moderator for the Kettering Foundation Public Policy Institute National Issues Forum (NIF) and served as a regional coordinator for the Social Security Challenge, an NIF project sponsored by the Pugh Foundation, and as co-moderator of the NIF on Affirmative Action.

Airey's creative nature found another outlet in music. She performed for two years as a clarinetist with the Northside (junior high school) Jazz and Wind Ensembles and for another two years with the Roanoke City Strings.

Tall and lithe, Airey also excelled as a high school athlete. She was named Most Valuable Runner on Patrick Henry's cross-country team and won the Coaches' Award as a member of the track team.

Somehow, Airey continued to find time for her first passion--art. She volunteered for three years during high school as a trained exhibit educator and guide at the Art Museum of Western Virginia's African art exhibits. "Some of the artworks seemed disturbing and even jarring at first," Airey says, "but they became a window into another culture that I wanted to understand."

When she attended a lecture in Washington, D.C., on the influence of African art on Picasso, she spoke with the lecturer, Warren Robbins, founder and director emeritus of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Robbins, who had established the Center for Cross Cultural Communications, invited Airey to assist in setting up African art exhibits for the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and for Maryland's Ward Museum.

In 1997, Leslie Graham, then undergraduate adviser for industrial and systems engineering and now director of undergraduate student affairs for ECE, met Airey at the Roanoke Valley Governor's School and, "immediately impressed with Sarah's intelligence and maturity," contacted ECE Assistant Department Head Charles Nunnally. The department avidly recruited Airey, who became one of the first two high school students ever offered a full Bradley Scholarship to Virginia Tech before enrolling. She also received a Marshall Hahn Engineering Scholarship, an Alumni Association Scholarship, and a Virginia High School League State Achievement Award and Scholarship.

"Sarah is an individual of rare caliber," says Nunnally, who was her undergraduate adviser and one of her computer engineering professors. "She's an exceptionally strong student but a person of great gentleness and modesty."

In addition to earning high academic honors at the university, Airey has served as the undergraduate representative to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors and as president of University Honors Associates, was a member of the award-winning Autonomous Vehicle Team, and helped design software used in the development of the next generation of U.S. Navy ships as an intern with the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington, D.C.

During her sophomore year, Airey applied for the Daughtrey Scholarship, which includes a stipend for travel abroad. As the Daughtrey Scholar for 1999-2000, she planned her trip to Ghana to study traditional art and culture and teach computer use in a village.

"Sarah was the perfect choice," says University Honors Program Director Jack Dudley. "Her deep love of African art influenced her thoughts about the design of computers, and she also cares deeply about people. She's able to connect art with science as well as connect her heart with her brain, and she went to Africa to find answers to thoughtful questions."

Airey found some answers in Ghana during the summer of 2000 but also discovered problems that she intends to help solve as a computer engineer. She chose Ghana because of the country's welcoming environment and reputation as one of the most computer-literate nations in West Africa. Yet she was surprised to learn that some current computer technologies are in many ways ill-suited to the culture there.

"Our software doesn't always meet their needs," Airey explains. "We make cultural assumptions in software design, but visual displays and symbols that make sense to usmanila folders displayed on a screen, for examplemight be alien to their points of reference. It's difficult for educators in Ghana to find software that children can use."

She discovered that the power of the Internet could do much good in Ghana and would like to see more African languages represented so that the information network will become more widely accessible. Airey met a tribal chief who was trying to start an AIDS program and wanted to use the Internet to access and transfer medical information. "It was the first time I realized how valuable the Internet could be in solving real problems," she says.

If computer usage doesn't become universal, "that will become another major gap between the haves and haves-not," says Airey, who believes that computers can help developing countries alleviate illiteracy, provide better medical care, find markets for commerce and traditional art forms, and find ways to reduce depletions of natural resources.

"Computer engineers today focus on solving high-tech design problems," Airey says. "I want to make computers work for people in developing countries, to make great strides toward incorporating computers and the Internet into the daily life of those countries in a way that won't damage their cultures and turn them into nothing more than little models of American business."

Airey believes that her research in artificial intelligence, tentatively planned at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland beginning in September, and her knowledge of the creative force of art will provide her with the necessary tools. She regards art and engineering as compatible discovery exercises. "Both are absorbing," she says, "and both compel me to find what is really there and not simply what I expect."

Airey's professional goal seems daunting, but those who have worked with her at Virginia Tech know her as someone capable of great achievement. "Sarah is an outstanding student," says Peter Haskell, an associate professor of mathematics, "but the qualities that set her apart are the enthusiasm with which she seeks new challenges, the intensity she brings to meeting those challenges, and the grace she exhibits as she juggles her many and varied commitments."