Hobbies
Collecting Insects, reading nonfiction, playing video games, play cello, assembling Lego models

Clubs
-JETS club (Junior Engineering Technical Society) - Mu Alpha Theta (math club) -Latin club, Academic challenge team (quiz bowl) -Science Bowl Team

Experience

Biography
I was born on September 12, 1990 in Voorhees, New Jersey. There I attended pre-school for a little while then in 1996, my family moved to Sugar Land, Texas. There, I would stay until the present. I attended Colony Meadows Elementary. While in elementary, I developed my first liking for science. Insects and dinosaurs initially drew me to study science. I would pore over books about mainly animal biology and paleontology. Both my teachers and parents encouraged me to go further with my studies. I would carry on this joy of learning form then on. I had a burning curiosity for how everything worked. I spent time watching many educational TV shows on PBS and the Discovery Channel and reading any science books that came my way. In this way, I slowly gathered information and a solid foundation in scientific thinking and curiosity. Once, I remember being told that DNA made proteins. I wanted to know how this happened, so I opened a biology textbook and learned the secret. From then on, I began to delve deeply into science. I could not tolerate not knowing something. Much of this studying was done in private and I displayed it rarely until I joined the TMSCA team. The competitions involved a science event which I readily competed in and I won 1st place several times.

The next phase of my life came when I attended high school classes. I began to take higher level science courses and I soon realized there was much more to science. I resolved to take my learning to a new level. Using my spare time, I studied numerous textbooks I bought in library book-sales. My father would often help me when needed; he greatly contributed to my scientific foundations. The quantitative aspects of science were new to me, so I quickly endeavored to strengthen that area. I found out that similar competition for science existed for high school. These questions were no longer the simple rote memorization questions but rather thought-provoking and meaningful. Through exposure to such problems, I gained a greater appreciation and understanding of scientific principles. I expanded into chemistry and physics as well as improving my biology skills. My high school science teachers all helped to strengthen my skills in all fields. I do not recall how, but I began to become obsessed with physics problems. I would seek out new and stimulating problems to attempt. I needed to go up another level, from plugging in numbers to deriving the formulas. The summer of 2006 was when I fused calculus and physics and instantly, a whole new horizon of possibilities expanded. In the 2006 to 2007 school year, I enrolled in Physics II C and I received my physics textbook filled with challenging problems. Meanwhile I explored other sciences such as biology and chemistry. Microbiology is my main interest in biology. I also study Roman History and attend Latin competitions involving Latin grammar and history. I also discovered the many Olympiads that existed for science and I took great interest into that. Science Olympiad is another competition that I always look forward to. It is composed of a variety of events and I have won several times in entomology.

I extended this learning in the summers. In addition to studying during the summer, I also attended several camps including the Duke TIP program and a camp in the Taiwan Medical School. There, I was able to get hands-on with science.

One of the major reasons why I look forward to participating in this event is because I will be able to see challenging and difficult problems which I have never seen before. It gives me a chance to try out my skill on a whole new level. In addition, I look forward to meeting others with the same interest in physics. I am constantly seeking new things to learn and eager to improve my skills in science. I hope to be able to raise my understanding of physics to an even greater level through the training camp.