Nissi Otoo

Nissi Otoo is a Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) scholar and a sophomore Computer Engineering major from Woodbridge, VA. She is involved in the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) as a Corporate Liaison, a member of ColorStack and Students of African American Sisterhood, and a peer mentor for Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED). As an undergraduate researcher in the Reimagining Equity and Accessibility in Computing for Humanity (REACH) Lab, Nissi and her mentor, Ihudiya Finda Williams, Ph.D., recently published the study titled “Technology Use in the Black Church: Perspectives of Black Church Leaders."

On November 12 of this year, Nissi presented on this publication at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) in Costa Rica with the financial support from the Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Computer Science departments. During her time in the REACH Lab, Nissi has been recognized for her integrity, ambition, and work ethic. She worked with Dr. Williams to conduct interviews, collaborated with co-authors at UT Austin to analyze data, and contributed to the project while balancing classes, campus extracurriculars during the year, and a summer research internship. She stated, “Presenting at CSCW was a great experience that showed me the importance of community-driven research and reinforced my resilience, passion for collaboration, and passion for technology’s role in fostering equity and accessibility.”