Christopher Llop

An engineer by training with minors in Mandarin and mathematics, Chris Llop is a highly active environmentalist with the resume to prove it. He was president of Engineers for a Sustainable World as a sophomore; founded a new environmental department within the UB Student Association; led a volunteer effort to rebuild a rundown park on Buffalo’s East Side; and served on several campus-wide and national committees relating to environmental stewardship.

In 2009, Llop was awarded the prestigious Morris K. Udall Scholarship, a national scholarship that celebrates student leadership on environmental issues. Llop’s dedication and commitment to green concerns helped him stand out from a pool of talented applicants. He is one of several students at UB to have received highly-visible national scholarships and fellowships in the past few years. The list includes multiple Udall and Goldwater scholarship recipients, a National Science Foundation grant recipient and the recipient of a postgraduate Clarendon Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford.

“People are realizing that here at UB, they can do something that will really make a difference,” Llop said. “There’s a lot of opportunity here.”

While Llop and others are recognized for the work they do on an individual basis, they know that getting into the national spotlight takes a lot of work and collaboration.

“There were a lot of people here that helped make that happen,” Llop said. “I wouldn’t have gotten the Udall if it wasn’t for them.”

Llop worked closely with the University Honors College to prepare his application for the Udall Scholarship. Together they honed in on Llop’s work with Engineers for a Sustainable World. Taking over that club as a sophomore, he raised membership from eight to 56 over a two-year period and helped to make it one of the leading green voices on campus. Llop also called on his study abroad trip to China and the massive pollution problem he witnessed there. Ironically, Llop missed attending a huge environmental conference so that he could stay in Buffalo and finish his application. In the end, the decision definitely paid off for him.

“At the time, I didn’t realize what a big deal it was,” Llop said of the $5,000 scholarship. “But once you actually get into it and see the network you’ve gotten, you realize that it’s really big. All of a sudden, you’re looking at 1,000 or 2,000 of the top environmental minds coming out of college.”

For Llop, getting involved comes naturally. And it’s definitely something he wants to continue—he’s already joined the board of directors of a Udall Scholarship alumni association. But with his vast reservoir of experience to draw from and a quality engineering degree in his pocket, the only problem is deciding the best way to go about it.

“I realize that I have this passion for bringing people together and facilitating some sort of positive social change,” Llop said. “The challenge is figuring out where exactly to plug that in. I just have to figure out the right way to do it.”