Biological engineering major Aisha Bobb-Semple '09 was honored with a student MLK Leadership Award.

Bobb-Semple has served as a judge of a stable-structure design competition for the Women's Initiative MIT Program, hosted by The Chantilly Academy. She and MIT graduate student Nicola Tan encouraged young women students to pursue engineering through the use of marshmallows and toothpicks as materials for building. They also offered positive statistics: 1966 only 1% of all engineers in the U.S. were women, compared to 20% in 2000. Girls are just as creative as boys, said Bobb-Semple and ​Tan. "It's just that most girls are not introduced to engineering, or it isn't presented as an option."

Later in 2009, she also received the Ronald E. McNair Scholarship Award and went on to earn her MD in Pediatrics from the University of Michigan Medical School.