I grew up in Northern California and moved to Los Angeles to get my bachelor’s degree in Astrophysics from UCLA. When I started, college was a huge culture shock for me. I went from having mainly female teachers and classmates to collaborate and form relationships with to becoming a noticeable minority within all my classes. I really struggled to make friends and form study groups in my introductory physics classes, even though there were hundreds of students. During my first year of studies, I wasn’t sure that I was cut out for this major.
Although I was struggling, one day I received an email promoting the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) and decided that attending would be a good opportunity to see if I wanted to continue getting a physics degree. But, once I attended the conference, I was blown away by the number of diverse career scientists and students who identified as women pursuing physics, and the solidarity of those promoting diversity. Since I am mixed race, the representation of women and people of color at CUWiP was extremely impactful. I now felt like I now had a community to support my academic path and future goals.
After I was able to find this community and network of mentors, I felt more confident in my abilities as a scientist and started participating in undergraduate research. To learn more about this work, please see the "Data Reduction Pipelines (DRPs)" and "High Redshift Galaxy Mergers" sections on my research page linked below.
Encouraged by the research progress I made as an undergraduate, I decided to apply to graduate schools. In the spring of 2021, I was accepted to a few graduate schools to continue studying astrophysics. I was only accepted to 4/12 schools I applied to. I mention these numbers only to emphasize that you can do everything right and still not get into a particular program! A lot of graduate school acceptances are based on luck, the committee, or who you or your letter writers know in the department. So try not to take rejections personally and do not get discouraged! If you want to learn more about the rejections I faced during both my undergraduate and graduate year, please check out my “failure CV.”
Currently, I am pursuing my PhD in Astrophysics at Caltech, working with Professor Dimitri Mawet in the Exoplanet Technology (ET) lab. My research interests include exomoon detection, exoplanet detection and characterization, and near-infrared instrumentation. Outside of research, I enjoy hiking, skiing, rock climbing, and drinking boba.