Ryan Cannon

Ryan Cannon is a graduate of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham and will be attending the University of Pennsylvania to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering. In high school, Ryan was named an AP Scholar with Distinction, a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar, and a semifinalist for the Coca-Cola Scholars Program, while also competing in theScience Olympiad national tournament as a Varsity Team Captain. He founded many independent projects, one of which being ThermoCharge, a cushion that generates electricity from body heat. Another one of his projects is HADES, a drone designed to locate hurricane survivors in disaster zones. He also contributed to a paper on freight decarbonization, accepted for publication in IEEE Xplore, and gained valuable research experience through internships with North Carolina State University, the California Air Resources Board, and Argonne National Laboratory. Outside of engineering, Ryan served as Co-President of Handle with Care for Kids, a 501(c)(3) organization, tutored math at Mathnasium, and volunteered with the Cary Teen Council and the Green Chair Project, work that earned him the Presidential Volunteer Service Bronze Award. At Penn, Ryan plans to focus on energy systems, specifically how power reaches, or fails to reach, communities that have historically been last in line for reliable infrastructure. This focus was shaped directly by building ThermoCharge and by watching how communities without reliable infrastructure adapt out of necessity rather than choice. His long-term goal is to start an engineering company that builds real power systems for the communities that need them most.