CE doctoral student Seyed Ali Ghahari was recently selected by the World Bank to represent Purdue, as a student volunteer and participant, in the 2017 Annual Youth Summit at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC. Ali was one of nearly 400 participants and volunteers at the 2017 Youth Summit, and chosen from a high-caliber pool of approximately 2,900 applicants from around the world representing 70+ countries and members of the public, private and academic sectors.

This year's version of the event was themed "Technology and Innovation for Impact" and took place December 4-5th, 2017. The event served as a platform for conversation and action to make the World Bank Group more relevant to the global youth and to better involve young people in the work of the World Bank Group. The Youth Summit Organizing Committee is comprised of young World Bank Group employees and is supported by World Bank Group senior management.

The first Youth Summit was held in October 2013 and emphasized youth leadership, revitalizing a new chapter of World Bank Group involvement and engagement with a dynamic generation of young leaders, activists, development professionals, and others interested in global youth-related issues. The 2014 Youth Summit focused on Governance, leveraging the experiences and expertise of participants to offer workshops highlighting the work of youth globally to increase transparency, accountability and collaboration in the context of participatory government. The 2015 Youth Summit made a global call to crowd-source solutions for climate change. In 2016, the Summit invited youth from all over the globe to rethinking education for new millennium hosting an ideas competition and attracting almost 400 participants in Washington, DC.

Ali, Professor Sam Labi's doctoral student, is working on a dissertation that is identifying and measuring corruption and cost inefficiencies in global infrastructure delivery.