Look up

This month has been a month of adventures. I just had the most phenomenal experience at the MRS 2026 Spring Meeting---in Honolulu, of all places!!---attending talks, connecting with researchers across disciplines, and finally presenting my own research during a poster session. This being my first conference, I was certainly very apprehensive at the start. How do you just walk up and talk to PhD students and professors who have an extensive career behind them? How do I introduce myself? What if I feel out of my depth? Fortunately, I very quickly learned that scientists are amazing: smart and thorough, yet humble, encouraging, curious, and extremely open-minded. The first two grad students I talked to during the Sunday Meet & Greet were from Florida State University, and they were so happy to answer all my questions! We talked about high-entropy materials, computational discovery, and general conference advice. Thanks to their initial support, I began to gain the confidence to appro...

 I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to be in the position where I was choosing between Caltech and MIT. Two phenomenal schools in their own ways: an impossible decision. In chronicling my jam-packed, transformational week at DiscoTech and Campus Preview Weekend I hope to highlight some of my insights for anyone in the same position in the future...or maybe you're just curious about the TeChPW week (pronounced Tech P W, or Tellurium, Carbon-Hydrogen, Phosphorus, Tungsten, if you're feeling fancy). Read on to find out which school I chose! Before I get into my day-by-day journal, here's just some background info on me (every experience is seen through a lens that's a product of a person's history, so hopefully you can see the rest of my stories from my perspective after understanding my history): I'm pretty ambitious. I want to solve challenging, meaningful problems. I have a vision of space exploration: it's always been my core belief that adv...