Senior profile: Bella Pignataro

Sometimes it just takes one class, or even one project, to make everything else click into place. In the spring of their second year, Bella Pignataro took “ES50: Introduction to Electrical Engineering” at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). A drummer since early childhood and four-year member of The Harvard Undergraduate Drummers, Pignataro designed a final project in which they attached lights to a drum, which would flash at the same frequency as the stick striking the drum. This made it look like the stick was never moving, despite the drum sounding over and over again.

“It was this cool illusion effect while watching someone drum,” Pignataro said. “After that, I realized this was what I wanted to do.”

Bella Pignataro has never been afraid to change directions. When they arrived as a first-year student, their original plan was to study computer science. With no computer science classes at their high school in northern Ohio, that subject became too intimidating, so they switched to neuroscience. That too wasn’t quite right, so they switched again, this time to bioengineering.

Pignataro, S.B. ‘25, hasn’t switched concentrations since taking ES50, but their focus within the field has continued to grow and change. They’ve worked as a teaching fellow in ES50 each of the last two years. Last year, at the encouragement of Chris Lombardo, Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, they joined the Harvard chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), and became club co-president in April 2024. They’ve done renewable energy projects through a summer internship at Vineyard Wind, and this year became a student researcher in the lab of Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science and Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology.

“You can have more than one thing you’re interested in,” they said. “I never just have one plan. I have to have backups.”

Growing up in a small community in Ohio, Pignataro always planned to go to Ohio State University. Their family all went there, they had OSU posters on the walls of their childhood bedroom, and they were admitted early to the school. Almost on a whim, Pignataro decided to apply to Harvard as well.

“Everyone in my friend group decided to apply to an Ivy for fun,” they said. “When I got my answer in April, I was genuinely flabbergasted. When I saw the confetti animation in my email, at first I thought it was odd to get confetti for not getting in. This was never in the cards. Harvard was like a mythical place for me. But discussing it with my family, they told me this wasn’t an opportunity I could pass up.”

Neither was the opportunity to do undergraduate research in the Aizenberg Lab. Their senior capstone project for ES100, a two-person project with Zora Zheng, was supervised by Haritosh Patel and Anna Schneidman, a Ph.D. candidate and research scientist, respectively, in the lab.

“I’ve never worked with such truly dedicated people in my life,” Pignataro said. “The main thing with both of them is it did not matter what was going on with them – every time we reached out to them, they’d immediately respond. They’d always make the time to meet with them. I didn’t have a lot of background in benchtop testing, and that’s what I ended up doing all of. Zora had no background in 3D printing, and that’s what she ended up doing all of. They were there for us every step of the way.”

For their project, Pignataro and Zheng designed SNIFFIT (Sensory Nature Inspired Fact Finder of Indoor Toxins), an electronic nose capable of detecting toxic fumes and harmful volatile chemicals. While their project focused specifically on the potential toxins in nail salons, the technology could be adapted for air quality monitoring in a range of settings.

“My idea going into ES100 was to pick a project that would let me have a partner I trusted, and that would match me with the right advisor,” they said. “Zora and I knew each other from EWB. I was interested in environmental engineering, she wanted to learn some EE stuff, so it was a perfect match. She’d done toxicology work before, and I’d built sensors, so it was great.”

Where Pignataro goes next still remains to be seen. They are passionate about renewables, and hope to find a job as a project manager in that space. But even if the future is still to be determined, Pignataro knows the people they’ve worked with at SEAS and beyond have set them up for success.

“It’s the relationships I’ve built here that have really meant the most and changed me as a person,” they said. “College is four years that can be relatively turbulent. Knowing you’ll have a group you’ll come back to, who you know have the same class schedule as you and are also truly your friends, that’s phenomenal.”