Barakah Mulla wins competitive scholarship through SWE
Barakah Mulla wins competitive scholarship through SWE
Computer science undergraduate student Barakah Mulla received a $10,000 scholarship from the Deloitte Foundation Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Scholarship for the 2025-2026 academic year.
The foundation awards 10 scholarships per year to members of SWE who are rising sophomores or juniors with a 3.0 GPA or higher, and are studying mechanical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science. Mulla, a rising junior, was selected for the scholarship from a pool of over 4,100 applicants nationwide.
With several older siblings in college stretching her family’s budget, Mulla was determined to get through school without any loans. This is the third academic scholarship Mulla has received since enrolling at UIC. Mulla received the John and Susan Major scholarship, which is granted to first-year engineering students through SWE, in 2023. Last year, she received an Illinois Graduate and Retain our Workforce (iGROW) Tech Scholarship, which supports students pursuing degrees in high-demand fields.
Mulla credits a Women in Engineering scholarship brunch with her learning about the first scholarship she received, and the Women in Engineering Program (WIEP) for offering continued support for her here at UIC. In addition to SWE, Mulla is a member of Rewriting the Code, a group supporting women’s growth in tech careers.
Mulla is spending the summer as a backend software engineer intern with iManage, a Chicago-based company software as a service company that provides document and email management solutions to the legal profession. She received the job offer after attending a job fair hosted by the UIC’s Engineering Career Center.
Last summer, she interned at UIC researching ways to automate and streamline the drafting of patents using large language models such as OpenAI and ChatGPT. Mulla also interned with UIC’s Innovation Center through Break Through Tech Chicago’s Sprinternship Program, developing an app prototype to increase patient engagement.
Mulla’s path to UIC
When Mulla was a senior in high school, she wasn’t sure what career field she wanted to pursue. After dismissing a career in medicine, she decided to give computer science a try.
“You would assume I did really well in computer science that year,” Mulla said. “It was the opposite. I had a heavy workload including, computer science and AP calculus. But I decided to turn my weaknesses in math and computer science into my strengths.”
After Mulla attended an informational brunch held by the UIC chapter of SWE, she felt good about the idea of attending UIC and joining the College of Engineering as a computer science student. She credits her involvement in both SWE and WIEP with providing her with a solid foundation of friendship. Next year, she hopes to start a Muslim Tech collaborative to connect Muslim students with tech opportunities in Chicago. She also wants to extend the visibility of tech careers to young people in her community–especially young women.
“I want to show others that CS is an opportunity they can pursue,” Mulla said. “Computer science can help you open a bunch of different career paths.”