Former Council Members: 2020-21
Princila Asante
Princila Asante is a Bronx Native and senior pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Stony Brook University. Being raised by her Ghanaian immigrant parents, inspired a strong work ethic and a passion for women’s health and interest in international affairs. With an education in Nursing and background in health, she wants to use her voice to actively fill the gaps in systems that fail to effectively address issues pertaining to women’s health and wellness.
In her future career as a midwife, she also aims to foster her awareness and advocacy for women’s health in countries like Ghana. She fervently believes that every woman deserves the resources and education needed to make informed decisions about her healthcare. This year she joins the incredible cohort of the President’s Council of Student Advisor to be a voice in assessing student matters. She is the Treasurer of Stony Brook’s Chapter of Scholars in Our Society and Africa, a nonprofit organization working to promote education and literacy in the lives of Ghana's youth.
As an active member of the university’s African Student Union, Stony Brook Student Nurses’ Association (SBSNA), and LIDA Volunteer Doula Program, she has also gained immense insight into branches of nursing that can be expanded internationally, as well as, provide a great trajectory for her career. This summer she had the opportunity to build on her knowledge working at SUNY The Haiti Project where she played an active role in developing COVID response plans for Akaye, Haiti. She strives to use these insights and skills to advocate for women’s right to adequate healthcare and health education in areas it is most needed. As a proud COSA member, she is cultivating this passion and sees great potential in what this opportunity has for her future.
Annamaria Cavaleri
Annamaria is a Senior from Queens, NY, and a member of the Council. Annamaria is a Psychology major on the BA track with a double minor in Writing and Rhetoric and Philosophy. She aspires to pursue a career in Higher Education Administration, and to one day hold a position of leadership within university administration.
Annamaria is also an Event Coordinator for Student Engagement and Activities: Programs and Traditions, where she found her passion for higher education through attending the National Association of Campus Activities (NACA) Conference in 2019. She is also a Resident Assistant in Hand College in Tabler Quad, and she spent the summer working as an Orientation Leader. Annamaria is also an Undergraduate Colleges ITS Forever Fellow, a tutor at the Writing Center, and the previous Vice President of Irving College Hall Council. She has also worked with CAPS and CPO on a research project, where she wrote interventions to compliment an online screening resource meant to detect common mental health problems in the campus student population. Annamaria is eager to work with COSA and give back to the Stony Brook community that has shaped her future.
Taylor Esposito
Taylor Esposito is a Senior within Stony Brook’s Honor College, and she is pursuing a double major in Political Science and Philosophy and a double minor in United States History and Professional Writing.
During her time at Stony Brook University, she has served as an Orientation Leader, Leadership and Service Forever Fellow, Resident Assistant, Women’s Leadership Council Student Member, Student Member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the College of Arts and Science, a JFEW Fellow, and a Student Assistant at the Dean of Students’ Office, and President of SBU’s I AM THAT GIRL. Taylor has been a Summer URECA Researcher, and has interned at Robert F. Kennedy Rights and the Stony Brook University General Counsel. Taylor is well known for her love for Disney movies and women’s rights.
Brianna Gianni
Brianna Gianni is a senior from Ronkonkoma, NY in the Stony Brook School of Nursing Basic Baccalaureate Program. She has been given the opportunity to serve as a Student Advisor on COSA for the 2020-2021 term. During her time at Stony Brook, she has served as the Breakthrough to Nursing Co-Director for the Stony Brook Student Nurses’ Association (SBSNA) for the 2019-2020 term during which she created and led events with the intention of encouraging the development of tools and skills necessary to be accomplished,accountable and culturally sensitive members of the nursing profession. She also is a current member of the SBU chapter of the National Society of Leadership and Success.
Before SBU, she studied at Suffolk Community College. While attending, she was given the opportunity to impact her peers as a lead student writing tutor by helping them gain the confidence and skills necessary for writing at the collegiate level. Her writing and achievements were honored by The Faculty Senate of Suffolk Community College.
Her first entrance into health care was as a physical therapy aide at Martino Physical Therapy since 2015. In her employment, she learned the many facets of achieving a balanced and healthy lifestyle and has the desire to expand and utilize this knowledge to help others. Having the privilege to experience being by a patient's side and assisting them on their healing journey from beginning to end inspired her to pursue a career in nursing.
After receiving her RN at Stony Brook University, she plans to achieve her Nurse Practitioner and combine this with her writing and passion for health care policy to influence the improvement of health care accessibility for neglected populations.
Brianna is eager to expand her community involvement here at SBU. She plans to use her time with COSA to influence the continued development on campus that is necessary in these rapidly changing times.
Allana Joe
Allana Joe (‘21) is a senior from Brooklyn, NY and is on the pre-medical track majoring in Biology with a minor in Health, Medicine, and Society. After medical school she plans on specializing in obstetrics or neonatology to pursue her passion for working with women and babies that she obtained through volunteer work and shadowing a neonatologist at St. Christopher’s Children Hospital. She furthered that passion by becoming a trained Doula through the collaborative efforts of Stony Brook Hospital and the Long Island Doula Association (LIDA). LIDA provides support to women with hands on comfort measures and emotional support during their labor and birth processes.
In addition to volunteering at the hospital on campus as a Doula, Allana has been involved in the campus community through mentoring incoming freshmen and being a TA through the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP), being Event Coordinator and Vice President of Hairitage, and working for the Dean of the School of Nursing, the Dean of the Libraries. She is also a member of the NAACP, and the National Society of Leadership and Success. In the 2019-2020 academic year, Allana was awarded the Ralph Watkins Memorial Scholarship and the National Engaged Leadership Award. Through COSA, she looks forward to giving back to her SBU community and make positive changes for future students to come.
Jade Kelly
Jade Kelly (’22) is a senior from Mastic, NY and is the Chief Deputy Liaison of the Council. Jade transferred from Suffolk County Community College in Spring of 2019 and is currently pursuing a BS in Business Management. During her first semester at Stony Brook she saw a need for a new organization and developed the Association of Transfer Students in April 2019. In serving as founding Vice President she’s helped the organization achieve over 130 members during their first year, becoming an Organization of Excellence. In addition she created the foundation for the Incoming Transfer Assistants (iTA) program with the Department of Campus Residences for new transfer students during their first semester at Stony Brook to help them acclimate and succeed. Jade is also on the Transfer Student Advisory Board (TAB) to assist the Director of Academic and Transfer Advising Services in bringing new intivaties for transfer students. For her efforts in Spring 2020 she received an Undergraduate Recognition Leadership Award in Leadership and featured in The Stony Brook Welcome Letter. She is also an Orientation Leader helping all students to their transition to Stony Brook.
Jade also serves the local community as a Public Safety Dispatcher for the Town of Brookhaven. In her three years of service she has had over three thousand calls ranging from civilian requests to coordinating responses with the federal government, local municipalities and other Town departments. One of her proudest moments was assisting the United States Coast Guard, Suffolk County Police Department and Public Safety with a boat overturn on the South Shore. Jade is excited to work with COSA to bring solutions to the issues facing the Stony Brook community.
Nylette Lopez
Nylette Lopez (BE‘21, MS’22) is a senior from Roosevelt, NY, and a member of the Council. Nylette is pursuing a combined bachelor’s and masters in Materials Science and Engineering and has been a Teaching Assistant for 3 courses in the department. Nylette has spent the past two summers at internships with Brookhaven National Lab and Honeywell Aerospace. She is a proud member of the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP), the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), and the Spirit of Stony Brook Marching Band (SOSB) Nylette is a Resident Assistant in Baruch College in Kelly Quad and was crowned Homecoming Royalty in Fall 2019. She is also a member of the Women’s Leadership Council, Hispanic Heritage Month Planning Committee, Intercollegiate Athletic Board, and serves as the Alumni Coordinator for CSTEP.
Nylette has a passion for outreach in STEM and hopes to serve in a higher education administration position after working as a materials engineer. Through her participation in COSA and collaborations with students, faculty, and staff involvement across campus departments and organizations, she advocates to provide impactful programs and opportunities for underrepresented students in STEM.
Sejal Mehra
Sejal Mehra (‘21) is a senior from Levittown, New York. She studies computer engineering with a minor in entrepreneurship and the role of gender in the tech industry as a student within the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Honors program. Sejal spends a lot of time her encouraging and supporting the next generation of underrepresented scientists and engineers through her work as a Lead Mentor with the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) Peer Mentoring Program, executive board member for the Society of Women Engineers Chapter, alumni of Girls Who Code, and as a BUILTBYGIRLS Ambassador. She has also had extensive professional experience with companies such as Viacom (now ViacomCBS), Microsoft, and littleBits. She is passionate about the field of engineering/technology and hopes that one day could be in the c-suite to lead a company to change the lives of the medically disabled and to break stereotypes of female leaders in technology.
Outside of technology, Sejal creates murals and art pieces using recycled computer and engineering components that can be seen around campus in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the WISE Honors Program, located in the Light and Heavy Engineering buildings, respectively. Her largest piece is an 8x13 feet mural, known as Luna the Future that is a representation of what it truly means to be a female in engineering today. Her vision behind the piece was to show the connection between technology and arts and bridge the two together to show the creative, imaginative side of art and the technical, analytical side of technology. In her free time she enjoys traveling, watching movies, 3D printing, grilling, and spending time with family, friends, and her pet fish. Sejal hopes to utilize her position on COSA to create change within the university to inspire the next generation of underrepresented students to pursue a career in STEM because it is not as scary as most make it out to be!
Tobi Somorin
Tobi Somorin (‘21) is a senior from Middletown, NY, and the President/Liaison of the Council. Tobi is a Biochemistry major on the pre-medical track and after medical school, he plans on pursuing trauma surgery in addition to starting his own clinic, and eventually hospital. Tobi spent his first two years at SBU serving the community through SBVAC, the campus’s volunteer ambulance agency. He enjoys responding to 911 emergency calls and teaching other students and staff useful life-saving practices such as CPR and Stop The Bleed techniques.
Tobi is also a member of the INDUCER research program. INDUCER focuses on cancer racial health disparities throughout the U.S. and seeks to put an end to the issues facing minorities in healthcare. He is currently working on an independent research project that looks at how stress impacts chemotherapy treatment in mice containing colorectal cancer cells from African American and Caucasian American patients. This will be used as a model of the human body, in an attempt to identify molecular differences between the two racial groups as a means of explaining the high mortality rates seen in the black community in regards to colorectal cancer. It’s a project that he has been working on with Dr. Jennie Williams and Dr. Mary Kritzer for the past year and is very excited to be back in the lab.
From helping kids on missions trips in the Cayman Islands, to sharing smiles with patients in behavioral health clinics, he’s eager to continue serving others through COSA. The opportunity is one he won’t let go to waste, and he is ready to work with the team to improve the University.
Anthony Xiang
Anthony Xiang ('22) is a junior from Great Neck, NY pursuing an accelerated BS/MS in Statistics with minors in Computer Science and Mathematics as a student within the Honors College. In his first two years at Stony Brook, Anthony served as a Teaching Assistant for two applied mathematics courses and researched opioid use in New York State under Dr. Fusheng Wang in the Biomedical Informatics Department.
Anthony is the director for SBUHacks, the school's largest student-run hackathon, historian for the Chinese Association at Stony Brook, a member of the volleyball club team, and mentor for SASC students. He has also interned for sustainability startup Allied Microbiota in the R&D park and tutors math and programming outside of school.
Anthony spent his past summer learning about civic tech and working on probabilistic address matching as a Data Science Fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau. He is eager to work with the COSA team to enhance university resources that will prepare students for long term career success.
Sydney Zhang
Sydney Zhang is a junior at Stony Brook University on the pre-medical track with a major in Biology on the BS track with a minor in Health and Wellness.During her time here at Stony Brook, she has served as a Science and Society Fellow, a teaching assistant for Statistics in Life Science, a teaching assistant for Organic Chemistry, and a teaching assistant for a biology lab. She is also part of the National Society of Leadership and Success.
Sydney has a passion for medicine and research. She is an undergraduate research assistant for Dr. Fred Friedberg in the Department of Psychiatry at Stony Brook Medicine, where she studies Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). She also dedicates her time to volunteering at Stony Brook University hospital in the emergency room. She aspires to pursue a career in medicine and surgery and helping others; she found her passion throughout the numerous experiences that she has been exposed to during her time here at Stony Brook. She also had the opportunity to study abroad at The Chinese University of Hong Kong during the summer and has also spent summers doing volunteer work. In addition to her volunteer work on campus, she also serves the off campus community through her participation in other volunteer programs in the city. Sydney is eager to continue to serve others and the campus community through her involvement in COSA.
Sophia Zhukovsky
Sophia is a third-year student from Stony Brook, NY, in the Stony Brook University Honors College studying Political Science and Environmental Humanities with a minor in International Studies. Here at SBU, she has made an effort to involve herself fully with the offerings of the university. She is the founder and current leader of the Stony Brook Food Recovery Network, an on-campus initiative part of a national organization that aims to reduce food waste on university campuses and tackle hunger in our community by recovering unserved food and delivering it to local groups in need of donations. She is also serving as the president of the Choose a Challenge Club, a club which combines raising money for charities such as the Be The Match Foundation and international adventures, wherein half of the money raised goes to the partner organization and half goes towards the cost of the trip. Her planned journey to Machu Picchu with CaC for Summer 2020 was disrupted due to COVID-19, so she intends to delay her trip to Summer 2022. She is also employed on campus as a Writing Tutor in the Writing Center, where she helps students with all forms of writing varying from essays for English class to personal statements for PhD applications.
Through her own academics, she has combined two unique majors to study the extensive interactions between environmental, social, and political issues and the communities that are actively fighting to address them. She recently worked as a Research Assistant in the Political Science Department, performing literature reviews on the subject of Muslim Women and Equal Access to Health Care in Africa. She hopes to apply the knowledge gained from her studies to a career in international relations where she can more directly address these problems on a global scale. She has studied abroad in Florence, Italy, and St. Petersburg, Russia, and looks forward to plenty of meaningful travel in her future. She has been recognized for her efforts as a recipient of the Dean’s List and the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award. As a new member of COSA, she is eager to make the most of this opportunity to enact meaningful change in the campus community and improve the university experience for herself and her peers.