I grew up in nature. My dad - who spent his childhood in the snow-capped mountains, deep gorges, and swampy rice paddies of Yunnan, China - pushed us away from television and towards the outdoors. I trekked up to 55 miles with nothing more than a backpack to hold our possessions and no connection to the internet or civilization. To these trips where I woke up with the first gleams of light at 4 AM and flew through my days hand in hand with the wind, I attribute who I am today. From all these years, I’ve discovered what I love about our planet: everything has a place. Nature reveals an elegant truth that no organism exists in isolation – whether breaking down organic matter, sustaining symbiotic relationships, or maintaining delicate predatory balances – but as a part of a whole. I took it upon myself to keep our environment intact and balanced with little steps throughout high school.

When my required Eagle Scout project became my passion project that reflected my continuous commitment to environmental service, I went from serving to impacting my community. My project started with a simple idea: to educate others on the importance of our environment and natural landforms that prevent city flooding. I decided to craft a watershed demonstration table, an interactive, topographical board that displays the South Livermore area. After 4 months and 40 hours, my planning was done. With 4 work sessions and 50 recruited volunteers, in every step, this simple idea grew. Adjustable wetlands, dams, and the rivers running through the mountains all came to life. I listened to and designed ideas from my volunteers, taught scouts about engineering and the environment, and supervised multiple work groups with different tasks such as building the lake or molding swamps.

All my hard work came to fruition when the Livermore Area Regional Park District decided to use my project to take to schools, parks, and fairs to show how the preservation of landforms impacts our day to day life. I also grew the One Million Pieces of Trash initiative while mobilizing students and scouts to support a worthy cause, as I worked with schools and troops to organize community trash pickups monthly over three years.

As I continue to my undergrad at Rice University and my future career, I believe understanding and working with nature allows me to find my own place in the world. I’ve found purpose in chemistry. I am no different from nature but I can harness foundational science to find purpose in nature’s dialogues. I’m drawn to the frontier of green chemistry, where catalytic and electrochemical reactions can pave the way for sustainable processes or harness new energy sources to preserve the environment for future generations.

I took my interest into my own hands at Berkeley Lab, where I produced a video podcast breaking down current research on infinitely recyclable plastic. I analyzed different materials, created animations explaining reactions behind acid-based recycling, and made an action movie style trailer to interest and inform a non-scientific community about its possibility to completely reshape everyday sustainability. Inspired, I want to find my own intersection between research and impact.

What excites me most about my educational journey is the prospect of working at the frontier of chemistry's most transformative applications. I hope to be on the forefront of developing efficient renewable energy technologies, green materials, or carbon capture processes that could help mitigate climate change, all rising and imminent topics that can allow us to coexist with our planet, and I play my part.