IN her 15 years living in the United States, Novalia Pisesha always carried with her the promise she made to her aunt suffering from lupus. Her academic path in bioengineering started at the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) in California. Her dream was to find a proper cure for autoimmune diseases. “I promised my aunt that I would invent an effective medicine,” she said through a video conference call on Wednesday, April 20.