Iowa State student doesn't let car crash, COVID-19, friend's death stop him from graduating

Yusuf Shehata, a 2018 Cedar Falls high school graduate, wants people to remember that philosophical quote whenever they’re faced with challenges.

He graduated from Iowa State University last month, but it didn’t come easily. It required persistence, grit and consistency.

Shehata followed his brothers Muhammad and Ahmad to ISU and started out pursuing computer engineering in his first semester, but finished with a 1.81 grade-point average. Shehata later switched to a bioinformatics and computational biology major.

He faced his biggest challenges during his final semester. For the first two weeks of classes in late August, he had COVID-19 and was suffering from a bacterial infection.

That put him behind in the midst of taking several rigorous STEM-heavy courses and led to making some sacrifices. He had to forego trips home to Cedar Falls while boosting study time and late nights in the library.

“I cut out everything not related to school,” he said.

Basically, all he was doing was eating, sleeping and studying. He decided not to travel to Iowa City to watch the Iowa–Iowa State football game in September.

While taking a break from the books — the same day as the big game — to go on a grocery run, his vehicle hydroplaned and ended up upside down into a ditch. And about two weeks later, he found out his close friend from Waterloo died.

“Events like that make you realize how death could be right there, and that there might not be a tomorrow,” Shehata said.

People were telling him to take a semester off. He was without a close buddy and a car. And despite lingering back pain caused by the accident, he now needed to bike everywhere.

But he continued to push through adversity, channel his late friend’s spirit and kept on schedule, graduating with his bachelor’s degree Dec. 17.

Shehata, too, has been serving as a research assistant with the California Academy of Sciences since the summer. He feels he’s making a difference collecting and analyzing DNA sequences on a terminal and helping address the impacts of climate change and pollutants on the world’s oceans and coral reefs.

As his research nears publication, Shehata is back home in Cedar Falls and looking at graduate programs closer to the ocean.

In pursuit of a career in marine biology and bioinformatics, he hopes the journey leads to more field work out on the coasts – possibly Florida, Oregon or California – and new skills like scuba-diving.

With more than 70% of the Earth being water, that’s where he wants to turn his attention. Shehata feels he could be one piece of the larger puzzle that “helps save the planet” – one of his driving motivations going forward in life.

“When you have a dream, you don’t let anything stop you,” he said. “Other people have faced tougher struggles than me and, against all odds, you can reach a better point in life if you keep on pushing. That’s what I want people younger than me to know.”