Aghiad Alkhiamy

Aghiad Alkhiamy, a current junior studying biomedical engineering at Wright State University, was born and raised in Damascus, Syria. While in Syria, Alkhiamy worked with an organization to collect clothes and blankets to give to those who were forced to flee their cities and who lost their homes. In the second year of the revolution, he traveled to Lebanon where he served as a volunteer to work with Syrian children in a refugee camp. Upon graduating high school in 2014 in Syria, Alkhiamy decided to leave for the United States of America due to the ongoing war in his country. 

Alkhiamy spent his first semester at Wright State studying English in the LEAP (Learning English for Academic and Professional Purposes) program before entering his major in biomedical engineering. Alkhiamy serves as treasurer of the Muslim Student Association and was the recipient of the 2017 Global Citizen Award from the Wright State University Center for International Education. Last year he worked with a United Kingdom–based association called From Syria with Love, which collects drawings from children refugees and sells their pieces in art exhibitions at universities. The money raised from the exhibitions is used to build hospitals and schools in refugee camps.

Alkhiamy summarizes his career goals as follows:

“I have two dream jobs. The first is to work in a company that creates prosthetics and to be the one who has enough engineering and human structure information skills so I can connect the two fields together and come up with a device that helps humanity. My second dream job is to go back to Syria and help people who suffer and have lost part of their bodies from the aggressive war that is happening there to try to enhance what is left in their lives. My biggest hope is to see my country safe again and to go back there and rebuild the oldest city in the world.”