Milpitas High School graduating senior Zahra Surani is on a mission to do innovative work in the biomedical engineering field.
Surani, 18, delivered the valedictorian speech Saturday morning, sharing advice for entering the real world with 714 fellow graduates.
“I feel like everything happens for a reason and you can turn it into something that would help you reach your goals,” she said.
Surani, who attended Challenger School for kindergarten through sixth grade, and went to Discovery Charter School before attending Milpitas High School, was born and raised in Milpitas.
Surani will attend the University of Southern California in the fall to study biomedical engineering. She has always been science, technology, engineering and mathematics-centered, as is evidenced by the work, organizations and research she has done in the past few years.
She said after doing an internship this past summer at Stanford University researching Down’s syndrome, she became interested in the intersection of biology and technology. Surani said she started taking some classes at De Anza, Foothill and West Valley community colleges, so she could focus on Advanced Placement coursework at Milpitas High.
She said her two favorite classes at Milpitas High were AP chemistry, in which labs cemented knowledge she learned from textbooks; and anatomy and physiology, where she learned about the human body and how everything in intricately linked.
Surani also started the Future Explorers program last August, which took place in a rented building on South Main Street. It involved 50 third- to sixth-grade students and 20 counselors conducting more than 300 science, technology, engineering and mathematics experiments. She started the program to earn her Gold Award from the Girls Scouts of America.
Surani credits her parents for her academic feats. Her father graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in civil engineering. Her mother earned a degree in electrical engineering in Pakistan.
At Milpitas High, she has served as president or co-president of DECA, the American Red Cross Club, Science Club, medical society and Make A Wish, and is a member of the California Scholarship Federation.
She also played for the junior varsity tennis team freshman through junior years and served on the Girl Scouts of Northern California’s Board of Directors and on the Red Cross Silicon Valley Youth Executive Board.
She said she looks up to Aga Khan of the Aga Khan Development Network and the humanitarian work he does. She has volunteered with the organization before.
“They work to alleviate poverty in developing countries. They are giving societies the means to alleviate poverty themselves versus just sending money,” Surani said. “I want to make technology that could certainly help with some of the health issues in the area.”
Surani, who had an overall grade point average of 4.59, was also admitted into Johns Hopkins University, Dartmouth University, Carnegie Mellon University, Rice University, the Universities of California at Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis, San Diego and Santa Cruz.
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