Senior Alyssa Napier dedicates herself to improving MIT
Whenever Alyssa Napier sees a problem, she feels an overwhelming urge to fix it — and she has found plenty of opportunities to problem-solve in pursuit of a stronger, more inclusive MIT community. Napier, a senior chemistry major and linguistics minor with a powerful sense of social justice, has thrown herself into numerous organizations and committees dedicated to improving life at MIT. Her passion for activism has inspired her to try new approaches to familiar problems, such as organizing a dialogue between local police and the students of Black Lives Matter, and initiating conversations about what MIT culture means to students, faculty, and staff. Napier first became interested in chemistry during high school, at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology in Lawrenceville, Georgia. She loves how all of chemistry starts with basic principles, and becomes increasingly complicated from there. “When you have these fundamental things that seem simple and obvious and...