Astronomy & Research

I have been naturally drawn towards astronomy ever since being a small child, with one of my most significant elementary school memories being encountering a book titled 11 Planets in the school library (until that point, I had only been aware of nine). In my junior year of high school, I had the opportunity to travel to Hawaiʻi on a two-week trip chaperoned by my physics teacher, where we learned about the tension over the planned construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope between the astronomical community, who wanted to build this powerful observatory on Mauna Kea, and the indigenous community, to whom that land is sacred. This trip led us to meet and learn from members of both communities, and was a fascinating and unique experience.

Continuing in this direction, I majored in Astronomy during my time as an undergraduate. As part of this, I served on the research team of Prof. Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute, whose focus is on exoplanets (planets that orbit stars other than our Sun) and the search for extraterrestrial life. As a result, I presented a poster pictured at the 9th annual Emerging Researchers in Exoplanet Science symposium in July 2024. The emphasis on habitability also influenced me to pursue the Master of Engineering in Earth and Atmospheric Science, for which I carried out a research project under Prof. Bruce Monger focusing on the frequency of marine heatwaves. Additionally, I was an actively involved member of the Cornell Astronomical Society. On top of a number of other reasons, I consider the field of astronomy to be highly meaningful because it places us as modern-day humans in the unprecedented position of being able to actually answer questions that the vast majority of previous generations had no way to approach other than by guesswork.