Branksome Receives Historic $5-Million Gift: iCAST Building to Be Named for Karen Jurjevich
Meet Amyna Ismail
AI, Alzheimer’s and Engineering Science
As part of the Toronto Science Fair last year, Amyna and her classmate explored the concept of an app to identify signs of Alzheimer’s disease. By combining an eye movement test used by optometrists with the identification of other symptoms, they outlined a new way to predict and detect the disease. Their winning project advanced to the Canada-Wide Science Fair.
Now Amyna is off to study Engineering Science at the University of Toronto, receiving the prestigious Dean’s Merit Award. She hopes to build on her earlier project by harnessing AI and machine learning to find new ways of detecting early signs of diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
“AI is such a rapidly growing sector, and there is still so much to learn and explore in terms of the potential of these technologies,” she says. “I wanted to pursue a rigorous program with an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to learning, to further develop my ability to think critically and solve problems.”
Driven to design solutions to make the world a better place and become a thought leader in her area of specialization, Amyna is especially looking forward to the Praxis design engineering course. Working with a team of students, she’ll use engineering design thinking to identify a real-world problem in the community and create a solution.
As she sets out to design a better world, Amyna will bring with her key learnings from Branksome Hall. Through her IB courses and extracurricular activities, such as serving as co-chair of the student-run World Affairs Conference, she developed strong leadership, collaboration and communication skills.
“Branksome’s approach to social and emotional learning will help me take risks and think ‘outside the box’ as an engineer,” she says. “And its emphasis on collaboration has inspired me to not only excel but to help others succeed as well.”
With Amyna’s ambitions, the world could be getting a lot brighter.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We wish to acknowledge this land on which Branksome operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and go to school on this land.
Setting the new standard for girls' education everywhere takes collective action. From all of us.
