Institut Teknologi Bandung

To her, outstanding students are those who already understand their position, potential, and self role in order to be able to actualize themselves to spread benefits to those around them. She believes that outstanding students are not the top, smartest, or most deified students. Outstanding students are rather those ordinary students who don’t always have straight-A grades (almost perfect GPA). In fact, an outstanding student would be someone who would be willing to be picked up and trusted to become the face of their university.

“This is all about how students interpret what they learn in university. How education does not stop on college notebooks, exam papers, or academic transcripts. Outstanding students are those who can glorify knowledge and transform it into benefits for themselves and society,” said the Biomedical Engineering undergraduate student.

As the eldest child in her family, there is a beautiful prayer behind the meaning of her name pinned by her parents. From here she was determined to continue to be a learner figure who can spread the knowledge she had received so far. She also has the principle that whatever she learns will always be beneficial for those around her. One of them is by sharing ideas on social media, trying to apply them in student competitions, or trying new methods in managing organizations.

She also picked up a message from her older brother who also won the 3rd place of the ITB Outstanding Student in 2021, Firman Nurudin, who thinks that the university is an Innovation-Hub, where people exchange ideas freely, and think freely. The university is a place to meet each other and construct criticism on what students are interested in, look at the roots of the problem and try to solve it in their own way.

“My parents always advised me to keep holding on to my religion and surrender myself after working hard. This is because I believe that luck is equal to opportunity and the capacity that we have. We can seek the capacity or competence that we want to have, but the majority of opportunities come from the sky. Religion made me realize that all the achievements that we have at this point are not solely because of myself, but because there are people involved due to God's help,” explained Alifia.

Even though she has an excellent predicate in terms of her academics, this student whose hobby is cooking is also active in conducting student activities. When she was still a freshman, Alifia initiated SAAI (Sakura Alumni Association in Indonesia, alumni of the Sakura Science Exchange Program) with other senior coordinator alumni to promote studying in Japan. Moreover, she also helped Keluarga Kabinet Mahasiswa with the Aku Masuk ITB (AMI) 2020 dan 2021 programs at the Association Forum in coordinating the ITB community roadshow process to regions in Indonesia to ignite the spirit of studying in higher education. As of now, she is chosen as the Head of Electro Student Association period 2022/2023 to build a self actualization ecosystem for Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical Power Engineering students in ITB. She also reasoned that these organizations are a form of community service and made them a sandbox, a place to test and experiment with organizational management and leadership methods that she studied in various places.

“Being chosen as one of the Outstanding Students of ITB gave me mixed feelings of course. I’m happy yet challenged since at that time I was also trusted to bring ITB’s good name to a national scale. This journey is different compared to the stories that I have heard of through this competition, but it made me slowly realize who I am, and convinced myself that my future goal is something that is very possible to achieve. This award meant finding myself as a student before graduating and confronting the next chapter of life,” Alifia said.

In a presentation delivered at the ITB Pilmapres 2022 some time ago, Alifia made an innovation called Baymin. The robot is a manifestation of the solution to a problem that she read from an article about someone who got injustice from health services because they weren't able to communicate fluently due to language differences. It was then that she realized the importance of communication in the health care process.

This robot was made with the ability of hundreds of languages and accents. She tried to design tools to translate those languages to be able to be understood easier by both parties. The name Baymin itself was inspired by Baymax, a fictional Disney character that became a mascot by her friends in Biomedical Engineering since it is a personal healthcare companion robot. Baymin is the minimum viable product version of Baymax which can help doctors in Indonesia.

Source: Direktorat Kemahasiswaan ITB
Reporter: Adi Permana
Translator: Hanna Daniela Ayu (Aerospace Engineering, 2021)