Hobbies
Tennis, Reading, Website Design

Clubs
California Scholarship Federation (CSF) President, GEAR UP Motivational Speaker, Associated Student Body (ASB) Webmaster, National Honor Society (NHS)

Experience
2005 United States Physics Team Member, 2005 Summer Science Program (SSP), Varsity Academic Team, National Merit Scholarship recipient, National AP Scholar

Biography
I was born in 1989 in beautiful San Diego, California. When I was in elementary school, I loved sketching and karate. I was also involved in an after-school program called Gifted and Talented Education (GATE). Funded by the state, the program is designed to illustrate basic scientific principles and stimulate the curiosity of children in physical science.

By the time I reached 7th grade, I started to take math and science classes at a nearby community college. I finished the Calculus series before I entered high school. In those years, I particularly enjoyed using symbolic mathematical packages such as Maple to visually understand vector calculus. After the differential equation class, physics started to make sense to me. After all, Isaac Newton invented Calculus in the 17th century to support the study of physics.

In my freshman year, I started playing tennis and taking dance lessons. I also became interested in designing websites and Java programming. I have written programs that solve the three-dimensional magic cube puzzle and simulate Huffman Coding using backtracking and recursion algorithms. I believe that my generation, armed with the computing resources, should be able to achieve more breakthroughs in physical science than physicists in the previous generations.

I took the AP Physics C level test, both mechanics and electricity, in my freshman year. I enjoyed learning about the laws that govern the world around me. In the summer of 2005, I applied my knowledge in physics to an astronomy research project at the Summer Science Program (SSP). For six weeks, I lived on top of a mountain in Ojai, California, studying the orbit of the asteroid Melpomene. Furthermore, this year, I taught a high school physics class at Bayshore Prep Charter School. It was a great opportunity for me to contribute to my community and to review some physics topics myself.

Next year, I will go to Stanford University, where I plan to study biomedical engineering. The physics training camp will give me a good taste of college life, in terms of the workload and the people. I look forward to meeting other students who are as interested in physics as I am.