Informatics PhD student Daniela Markazi has been named the doctoral student winner of the 2023 Graduate Student Leadership Award from The Graduate College. The award recognizes two graduate students (one master's and one doctoral) who have exhibited outstanding services that have positively impacted the UIUC campus and wider communities.
Markazi has over a decade of leadership championing diversity in STEM. Highlights of her work include serving as chair of the central Illinois chapter of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) and providing mentoring and coaching to local high school students in areas of coding and robotics. Additionally, Markazi has demonstrated outstanding leadership through her efforts as the student leader of the UIUC Puerto Rico Disaster Relief Program. In this role, she has taken UIUC students on trips to Puerto Rico to engage with different communities and learn about cultural competence. These efforts led to the creation of a new course at UIUC titled "Community-Based Design and Management for Disaster Resilience." The Graduate Student Leadership Award selection committee extended praise to Markazi for "making an impact that will extend years beyond her graduation."