Colleen Grinham always knew she wanted to help people. As a young girl, she set her sights on donning a white coat and becoming a medical doctor. Then she encountered blood. Her plans changed.

These days Grinham, now an engineering student, still aims to help people – millions of them.

Grinham wants to find better ways to provide drinking water and treat wastewater. While it may sound like a dirty and unglamorous job, it is one very much in demand. The United Nations estimates that two in every 10 people in the world lack access to clean drinking water. The World Health Organization says that every day 3,900 children die because of dirty water or poor hygiene brought on by a lack of clean water.

Getting clean water to impoverished or drought-stricken areas requires political will and a small army of engineers. Grinham wants to be on the front lines, finding cheaper, faster and more environmentally friendly ways to treat wastewater.

“I never thought I would end up in my niche, but I’m glad I did,” she says. “I’ve always been putting myself out there to help others.”

“Out there” for Grinham is the world. The 22-year-old Massachusetts native has visited more than 26 countries, about 14 of them thanks to programs offered through the University. She spent a year in Germany alone as part of the University’s International Engineering Program curriculum.

For six months, she studied at the Technical University of Braunschweig and researched at the Institute of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering. There, she found ways to design wasterwater treatment plants that can simultaneously filter water and use the methane released to generate electricity.

After her time in Braunschweig, Grinham traveled 200 miles to the southwest to intern at a Bayer plant in Leverkusen. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with German engineers, Grinham worked to improve Bayer’s wastewater treatment systems that are implemented at the company’s plants around the world.

And the German engineers listened because Grinham spoke in flawless German, technical words and all, thanks to courses she completed at URI. She complemented those classes with Arabic classes and, crisscrossing Europe, she picked up Greek, Spanish and Italian language skills.

Soon she hopes to speak six languages and become an engineer who can not only solve the world’s problems, but communicate the solutions as well.