Firehiwot was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a second-year PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She was also a transfer student at Cornell, where she was an undergraduate from 2016-2018. She completed her associate degree at Montgomery College in Maryland. Her research area is power electronics and plans to work on electrification projects in areas with no access to electricity in the future.

When she was an undergraduate at Cornell, she was part of Engineers for Sustainable World and traveled to Nicaragua and Brazil to do community development projects. She enjoys participating in K-12 STEM education programs and is interested in mentoring undergraduates, particularly transfer students. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies, taking short walks, and sometimes writing Amharic poems. Firehiwot looks forward to being involved in the Becker Community!