My interest in STEM grew when I learned java programming at De Anza College Summer Extension in 9th grade. At the end of that summer, I was able to figure out how to program a little bear doing up-side-down motions. The excitement drew me close to the STEM world.

Although I was taking pre-calculus, biology and chemistry during 9th and 10th grades, I strongly felt there was lack of something in my science field. Later I heard the breaking news of gravitational waves detection by LIGO in early 2016, the words “physics” and “Einstein” jumped into my mind immediately. I decided to apply for COSMOS (California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science) and very luckily got accept by UC Irvine for the cluster of “The Big Bang and the Subatomic World”. I spent the most of the summer in COSMOS studying cosmology and particle physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity and gravity, and “dark matters” in universe. I also participated in a group research project entitled “Dark Matter Distribution in M31”, where we plotted the distribution of dark matter within the galaxy Andromeda, or M31. After comparing calculated mass and rotational velocity to the measured values, we concluded that there is apparently more mass inside M31 orbits than we can observe.

The unknown of the universe and the beauty of the explored lands gave me a path to develop my knowledge further than a traditional classroom agenda.

In the summer of 2017, I extended my learning in STEM further into the real engineering world on earth. I got hired as a summer intern at Aavid Thermalloy California Design Center in San Jose, California. I quickly learned and mastered my first assigned project, and created detailed computational fluid dynamics models of human skin on the torso and forehead for wearable devices. Then I got exposed to other projects where I completed set up detailed guidelines and tools to determine effective thermal conductivity of complex printed circuit boards. The best part was that my hard work and dedication was to be sent to the clients for review. I felt rewarded by contributing to real projects; however I also realized that the real world could not afford any mistakes. I became skilled at creating CAD (SolidWorks, http://www.solidworks.com/) models, running simulations on CFD (IcePak, http://www.ansys.com/products/electronics/ansys-icepak), and coding on Excel Macro to help make inputting data easier.

This real-life involvement in the corporate world made me realize how important communication is and how much fun I have when I'm engineering. This whole experience solidified my passion that I've been searching for so long.