Hello World!

I’m Lucy Strazis and I’m from the Chicago suburbs so these Pittsburgh hills are hard for me! I am majoring in Chemical Engineering, but I am also getting minors in Computer Science and French as well as a Nuclear Engineering certificate. With my Chemical Engineering degree, I want to go into nuclear engineering and working with nuclear reactors. If you bring up nuclear energy around me I will go on a twenty minute tangent.

Outside of school I love to play guitar. With that passion for music, I also love to go to live shows. I’ve been to over 20 live shows and I am a serial Lollapalooza music festival attendee. In high school I played volleyball so now I am avidly involved in the club Hard Hitters that teaches children how to play volleyball. In addition, I also introduce children to STEM through the Society of Women Engineers here at Pitt.

In my extended free time in summer I love to travel and enjoy nature. I am an avid hiker and my favorite hiking trail is the Appalachian Trail. One day I want to hike the whole Appalachian Trail but that will take at least 5 months. I have plans next summer to go backpacking through Europe and to live in a van out west for a few weeks. I also love to go to the beach and enjoy the water.

Between ages 6 and 8, I lived in Switzerland and traveled all around Europe while there. In that time I fell in love with traveling and Europe. Because of that experience, I was determined to do a study abroad program in college. A location like Cyprus especially intrigued me because it was still in Europe, which I love, but it was a part I never explored. I didn’t spend much time in Eastern Europe or in the Mediterranean so getting the opportunity to experience that different culture is really exciting.

Furthermore, the content of the course being supply chains drew me into this program. Supply chains govern so much of the processes and products of the world. Gaining a better insight on their function is integral for understanding markets in my future career. Because I want to work with nuclear reactors, I will have to deal with global supply chains a lot in order to get the necessary elements for the nuclear reactions and all of the other parts of the reactors. Having a background in supply chains will greatly help me in understanding the markets I will work within.

I’m excited to embark on this journey and learn so much more about a new culture and a topic I have no background in!