2023 VCSIA PhD Student Award Winner-Eleonore Poli
Eleonore Poli is finishing her PhD in Materials & Metallurgy at Lucy Cavendish College. Upon moving in Cambridge, she started volunteering for the Friends without Borders language program, providing students with the opportunity of learning French, as well as became an MPhil Student representative. She then became the welfare officer and treasurer for the university handball team. She joined the Global Shapers Cambridge hub, starting first in the blood donation project, before starting her own sustainable fashion project and then becoming the hub co-curator. She also created a temporary COVID19 oxygen relief project in May 2021 to help deal with the oxygen crisis in India, building a project on the conversion of diving air tanks into oxygen bottles for COVID19 patients. She funded a sustainability project, the Climate Clock Project, creating a database of sustainable actions to help mitigate climate change. At the same time, she funded CHASM, the community on analogue space missions, providing conferences, workshops and wiki to increase coordination and communication in the field and improve research. She has mentored high school female students them write their first scientific paper and in applying for universities. She a public speaker, speaking to schools, high schools, universities and the general public on space, sustainability, careers in space and STEM and female empowerment. She is now looking into the use of analogue space missions for the testing and development of space missions for astronauts with disabilities, to increase access to space for all.
