From blackboards to whiteboards to smartboards, classroom education has experienced the rapid adoption of technology. During the Covid-19 pandemic, most learning across the U.S. went completely virtual, further emphasizing the importance of digital technology in education. VR and AR technologies, collectively named “XR” technology, have risen as new educational tools that allow students to travel the world—all while sitting at their desks. Using XR technology, schools could provide students with lab experiments that are too dangerous for the classroom, immerse students in affordable virtual field trips, and give students supplemental options for visual learning. Schools could provide students with XR labs that pose too much risk to be conducted physically. Some experiments are too complex or present significant danger to students, rendering them impossible to be completed in the classroom. For example, a chemistry experiment involving radioactive substances may not be a viable option for students. If schools risk performing dangerous labs in the physical classroom for higher-level classes, the consequences could be disastrous. For instance, in 2008, a technician at UCLA suffered from third-degree burns after an accident involving t-butyl lithium. By using XR technology to simulate labs, schools could minimize lab risk and provide adequate lab experiments to higher-level students without worrying about physical dangers. XR technology could also provide students with immersive experiences that are too expensive for the classroom. Many educational field trips are either too expensive or far away. For example, physics students would benefit from exploring the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator. However, LHC is located in Switzerland. Companies like Google are already working to provide schools with cheap XR technology that simulate different locations. On top of their cheap price, XR headsets are reusable. By using XR technology like Google Expeditions to simulate field trips from the classroom, schools would make immersive field trips more accessible and cheaper. On the student level, schools could supply XR technology to each class as a supplemental option for visual learners. Current learning is biased towards those who can best retain facts when overloaded with information. Many students, including me, find themselves stuck in a static, lecture-based learning environment. As a visual learner, I retain information much more effectively with hands-on experiences such as maker space labs or chemistry flame experiments, which XR technology can simulate. XR technology solves this issue by catering to students with different learning styles. For example, PraxiLabs designs activities that suit multiple learning styles and provides students with study aids. By providing students with an optional XR supplement in each class, schools would help all students learn more equally and effectively. Schools could utilize XR technology to let students conduct dangerous lab experiments, go on virtual field trips, learn practical skills through immersive experiences, and use an effective learning supplement for visual learning. The classroom relies on the adoption of digital technology to function and evolve. The adoption of XR technology at schools will provide students with a more hands-on and effective learning experience than ever before.

Cryptocurrency has taken the world by storm, praised for blockchain's guarantee of security and speed. However, cryptocurrency's proof-of-work (PoW) model has been evolving into a major factor that harms the environment and causes climate change, and it should have never been invented. Most cryptocurrencies use the PoW model, which requires people to "mine" cryptocurrency by increasing their energy consumption to solve computationally difficult problems. As a result, Bitcoin mining takes up 1% of the world's total global electricity consumption. PoW cryptocurrencies have contributed to significant carbon emissions and are now finally being replaced by other crypto models such as proof-of-stake and proof-of-authority. This gives me hope that the future will be better, especially with regards to climate change and green, renewable technology!

I'm most excited about cryptocurrency's emerging proof-of-authority model. Cryptocurrency has taken the world by storm, praised for blockchain's guarantee of security and speed. However, cryptocurrency's proof-of-work (PoW) model has been evolving into a major factor that harms the environment and causes climate change, and it should have never been invented. Most cryptocurrencies use the PoW model, which requires people to "mine" cryptocurrency by increasing their energy consumption to solve computationally difficult problems. As a result, Bitcoin mining takes up 1% of the world's total global electricity consumption. PoW cryptocurrencies have contributed to significant carbon emissions and are now finally being replaced by other crypto models such as proof-of-authority.

“What are all those shapes?” I asked my mom, staring curiously at her PowerPoint presentation as she made her final touches. Smiling, she responded, “that’s a cytokine storm.” She went on to explain the complex interactions between cytokines, macrophages, lymphocytes, and other proteins and molecules. My ears perked up, and I tried to absorb every new term she uttered. This was one of many episodes of instruction that exposed me to the world of pharmaceutical research. Every project that my mom took on yielded an opportunity for me to learn about new biological processes and molecules with strange-sounding names. Scientific research became ubiquitous in my life. Continually learning from my mom’s research started my lifelong search for answers, which I took advantage of in my own computer science research projects. Researching on my own, in turn, led me to develop a long-term goal to research in academia or big tech. I dream of continuing the search for knowledge in college, a doctoral program, and beyond. I’m specifically interested in data privacy research, which I have already delved into for my own research project. I aspire to join a research group specialized in developing new privacy definitions such as differential privacy. While I continue to learn from my mom’s work and research, I live alone with my mom, I have no siblings, and my dad's presence has been inconsistent: he jumped between jobs and finally settled in China after my parents’ divorce. My mom has always worked a full-time job and even continues to work from home every night. However, solitude has given me freedom to interact with online communities and challenge myself. For example, when I started computer science research, I learned my first coding languages, MATLAB and Python, entirely from expert programmers who provided help through MATLAB Central and a Leiden University tutorial. I asked questions in Stack Exchange, receiving detailed and helpful answers almost immediately. In addition to engaging in online communities, I have reached out to and have formed special relationships with my teachers. I frequently find solace in my Science Olympiad advisor (and AP Chemistry teacher): I regularly visit her room and we talk for an hour about anything—life, college, or school. She and other trusted advisors in my school have become my guardians, helping me mature and develop intellectually. While I use the resources around me now, I will inevitably face financial barriers. My mom has secured a year’s worth of college expenses for me, but we do not qualify for need-based aid. I have already been admitted to MIT and Stanford based on my strong academic and extracurricular records, but since these colleges do not award merit-based aid, I will not receive any financial aid. The Ballard Memorial Scholarship will allow me to secure a 4-year education without having to worry about the cost. With the Deborah's Grace Scholarship, I will be able to earn a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and receive a PhD in post-quantum cryptography. Then, I will have the knowledge necessary to pursue my dream of scientific research. With a graduate education, I will be able to research the growth of effective data breach techniques and create new privacy-preserving algorithms, protecting confidential data and making digital services safer and more effective.

In the last Science Olympiad competition of my freshman year, we didn't win a single medal. Within a week after the disastrous competition, almost a third of the team quit. In the middle of this crisis, I decided to run for Co-President of the team. I gave a persuasive campaign speech, enumerating the club's challenges and potential solutions. When I won the election, I was glowing with pride. However, as a freshman, I felt driven to prove my legitimacy and listen to my teammates' suggestions. First, I tackled the cheating problem: compiling questions from previous competitions, I created 23 tryouts. Then, I set up a recruiting campaign, including announcements and newspaper articles. Within two years, we grew from 10 to 55 members. We became the most extensive academic club in school and received greater funding and higher advisor salaries. To manage the larger club, I created captainship positions in Engineering, Life Science, Earth Science, and Physical Science. Together, we formed B and C-teams and registered for more competitions. The results from our reforms were extraordinary: within the first year, we improved from 40th to 21st place at the Yale Invitational and placed 1st at the Sacred Heart Invitational. The next year, we ranked 15th at Yale—highest among Connecticut teams—and placed 1st at Sacred Heart again. After my successful 10th grade Science Olympiad season, I noticed a lack of competitive STEM opportunities for middle schoolers in my town. I contacted my 8th-grade science teacher, Mrs. Sullivan, to create an Olympiad team at my former middle school. We organized team logistics, registered for competitions, and ordered science kits for the middle schoolers. Then, we recruited 20 middle schoolers and set up regular team meetings hosting volunteers from the high school Science Olympiad team. One of my students particularly inspired me. She was assigned the Ornithology event, which she eagerly prepared for by convincing her parents to purchase a bird field guide. During study meetings, she was completely enraptured in her task, excitedly typing up notes as she flipped through her guide. Her determination and erudition reaffirmed my commitment to provide middle schoolers more STEM opportunities. In January, I helped bring the team to the Sacred Heart Invitational—their first science competition—and the students placed 4th out of Connecticut teams. This motivated them even further to practice for States. Seeing that STEM had become important to the students, I felt accomplished and proud. Since then, I have continued to mentor and provide STEM opportunities. Senior year, I provided STEM exposure at an even higher and more expansive level. I directed the Transcontinental Invitational, a national competition involving 85 teams from 18 different states. On test day—my 18th birthday—an unforeseeable internet server outage caused all students' answers to stop saving in the middle of their exams. I spent 5 hours tracing the issue and then coordinated extensions. When the problem was finally fixed at 11 PM, I collapsed into my chair. It wasn't easy, but I was proud to have provided STEM exposure to over 1,200 students. In the long-term, not only do I want to be an academic, but I also aspire to be a STEM education advocate—specifically a Science Olympiad state director in charge of expanding STEM's scope in my region. My Science Olympiad experiences have inspired me to seek out ways to provide better STEM opportunities wherever I go. The youth are our future, and equipping them with more exposure to education outside standard classes is essential to progress humanity and technology.

Online data is ubiquitous, and data as a currency is only becoming more valuable; however, data markets are complex and socially sensitive. According to the Harvard Business Review, Germans are willing to pay up to $184 to protect their individual health data, while people in the United States and China are quick to sell their data at single-digit prices. These variabilities provide an important context for the trend of data commodification. In the rush to convert data into assets, I need to carefully consider this variability in cultural values as I engineer my own privacy algorithms. This issue is especially interesting since it dovetails with one of my long-term goals: to collaborate with other researchers to design breakthrough privacy-preserving cryptographic algorithms that will help us win the race against hackers and data infiltrators. To achieve that goal, I will need to take into account many different sociocultural realities. Ensuring that organizations handle data ethically is important, but it is only one side of the coin. Government legislation and industry practice need to match the interests of the public and cooperate with privacy-preserving algorithms, acknowledging that differing values of data are assigned by societies. Created in conjunction with cultural values, a universal, unbreakable privacy-preserving algorithm is the end goal of cryptographic research. If organizations cannot keep up with the evolution of data breaching technology, the data of billions of people could be compromised. Many contemporary examples of data breaches exist: Equifax in 2017, Marriott in 2018, and Facebook in 2019. These hacker attacks leave the people who give their data to big organizations feeling frustrated, thinking they cannot do anything to prevent their data being stolen. In addition, these breaches undermine the entire data industry: no matter the cultural values of data involved, a data breach is a data breach. I aspire to advance privacy definitions and apply them to algorithms that prevent next-generation data attacks. Earning a Computer Science degree, I will have the knowledge necessary to join a research group specialized in developing privacy definitions such as differential privacy. Inevitably, due to the constant evolution of hacking and increasing integration of quantum technology in computer systems, differential privacy will become outdated unless researchers develop stronger definitions of privacy that can be applied in the post-quantum world. Harvard will prepare me to adapt to the growth of effective data breach techniques and create new privacy-preserving algorithms. Strengthening data privacy by developing privacy-preserving algorithms is one of my major goals, but I also acknowledge that in the current data market, many companies trade and sell data to other organizations without users even knowing. By developing stronger notions of privacy, I would be perpetuating these companies’ ethically questionable behavior. Therefore, another one of my long-term goals is to drive the data-handling and data-mining industry to a more ethical level that would allow people to build trust with organizations—all while permitting companies to continue utilizing data trends and bettering their products. One particular company I am interested in researching under is Google. Google was the first major technology company to release its own differential privacy system, RAPPOR, which was arguably the first system that brought the notion of differential privacy to the public. Companies such as Apple soon followed Google’s lead. Now, Google is expanding its mission to develop privacy-preserving mechanisms in machine learning by releasing TensorFlow Privacy, an open-source library released in early 2019. Google’s privacy mission matches my own career goal to be on the cutting edge of the data privacy field. As I look to my future career, I aspire to research at Google, specialized in developing privacy definitions.

“What are all those shapes?” I asked my mom, staring curiously at her PowerPoint presentation as she made her final touches. Smiling, she responded, “that’s a cytokine storm.” She went on to explain the complex interactions between cytokines, macrophages, lymphocytes, and other proteins and molecules. My ears perked up, and I tried to absorb every new term she uttered. This was one of many episodes of instruction that exposed me to the world of pharmaceutical research. Every project that my mom took on yielded an opportunity for me to learn about new biological processes and molecules with strange-sounding names. Scientific research became ubiquitous in my life. Continually learning from my mom’s research started my lifelong search for answers, which I took advantage of in my own computer science research projects. Researching on my own, in turn, led me to develop a long-term goal to research in academia or big tech. I dream of continuing the search for knowledge in college, a doctoral program, and beyond. I’m specifically interested in data privacy research, which I have already delved into for my own research project. I aspire to join a research group specialized in developing new privacy definitions such as differential privacy. While I continue to learn from my mom’s work and research, I live alone with my mom, I have no siblings, and my dad's presence has been inconsistent: he jumped between jobs and finally settled in China after my parents’ divorce. My mom has always worked a full-time job and even continues to work from home every night. However, solitude has given me freedom to interact with online communities and challenge myself. For example, when I started computer science research, I learned my first coding languages, MATLAB and Python, entirely from expert programmers who provided help through MATLAB Central and a Leiden University tutorial. I asked questions in Stack Exchange, receiving detailed and helpful answers almost immediately. In addition to engaging in online communities, I have reached out to and have formed special relationships with my teachers. I frequently find solace in my Science Olympiad advisor (and AP Chemistry teacher): I regularly visit her room and we talk for an hour about anything—life, college, or school. She and other trusted advisors in my school have become my guardians, helping me mature and develop intellectually. While I use the resources around me now, I will inevitably face financial barriers. My mom has secured a year’s worth of college expenses for me, but we do not qualify for need-based aid. I was admitted to MIT, Stanford, and Harvard based on my strong academic and extracurricular records, but since these colleges do not award merit-based aid, I will not receive any financial aid. The Mortar Scholarship will allow me to secure a 4-year education without having to worry about the cost. With the Mortar Scholarship, I will be able to earn a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and receive a PhD in post-quantum cryptography. Then, I will have the knowledge necessary to pursue my dream of scientific research. With a graduate education, I will be able to research the growth of effective data breach techniques and create new privacy-preserving algorithms, protecting confidential data and making digital services safer and more effective.

Online data is ubiquitous, and data as a currency is only becoming more valuable; however, data markets are complex and socially sensitive. According to the Harvard Business Review, Germans are willing to pay up to $184 to protect their individual health data, while people in the United States and China are quick to sell their data at single-digit prices. These variabilities provide an important context for the trend of data commodification. In the rush to convert data into assets, I need to carefully consider this variability in cultural values as I engineer my own privacy algorithms. This issue is especially interesting since it dovetails with one of my long-term goals: to collaborate with other researchers to design breakthrough privacy-preserving cryptographic algorithms that will help us win the race against hackers and data infiltrators. To achieve that goal, I will need to take into account many different sociocultural realities. Ensuring that organizations handle data ethically is important, but it is only one side of the coin. Government legislation and industry practice need to match the interests of the public and cooperate on privacy-preserving algorithms, acknowledging that different societies value privacy differently. Created in conjunction with cultural values, a universal, unbreakable privacy-preserving algorithm is the end goal of cryptographic research. If organizations cannot keep up with the evolution of data-breaching technology, the data of billions of people could be compromised. Many contemporary examples of data breaches exist: Equifax in 2017, Marriott in 2018, and Facebook in 2019. These attacks leave customers feeling that they cannot do anything to prevent their data from being stolen. In addition, these breaches undermine the entire data industry: no matter the cultural values of data involved, a data breach is a data breach. I aspire to work alongside other bright researchers to advance privacy definitions and apply them to algorithms that prevent next-generation data attacks. Majoring in computer science and receiving a PhD in post-quantum cryptography, I will have the knowledge necessary to join a research group specialized in developing privacy definitions such as differential privacy. Inevitably, due to the constant evolution of hacking and increasing integration of quantum technology in computer systems, differential privacy will become outdated unless researchers develop stronger definitions of privacy that can be applied in the post-quantum world. Harvard will prepare me to adapt to the growth of effective data breach techniques and create new privacy-preserving algorithms. Strengthening data privacy by developing privacy-preserving algorithms is one of my major goals, but I also acknowledge that in the current data market, many companies trade and sell data to other organizations without users even knowing. By developing stronger notions of privacy, I would be perpetuating these companies’ ethically questionable behavior. Therefore, another one of my long-term goals is to drive the data-handling and data-mining industry to a more ethical level that would allow people to build trust with the organizations to which they give their data away while permitting companies to continue to utilize data trends and better their products and services. Now, I’m interested in founding a cybersecurity startup focused on creating and employing differentially private algorithms. Although differential privacy is proven to be effective against post-quantum hacking techniques, it’s still not widely used by companies and governments. My startup would protect other organizations from the coming wave of next-generation hackers by putting differentially private algorithms into practical use, protecting confidential data and making digital services safer and more effective. I aspire to be on the data privacy field's cutting edge.

The Memorial Day Parade, one of our two annual fundraising events, had been cancelled in May due to COVID-19. Without money for registration fees, state dues, and science kits, the club would effectively shut down this year. This wasn't the first crisis I had faced to save the Science Olympiad team: in my freshman year, the club had been in shambles and finished the season without a single medal. Determined to save the team, I ran for president. Once elected, I enacted reforms that grew the team size fivefold. Over the next two years, the club marched from one victory to the next, bringing home top awards from the Yale Invitational and Sacred Heart Invitational. Science Olympiad was one of the only opportunities for students to learn science outside of the classroom, and I simply couldn’t let our team fall apart again. I signed the team up for five online tournaments, and due to our team’s low funding, the team coach and I set up a GoFundMe. However, the fundraiser was soon taken down by the school. I looked to online communities to empathize with other Science Olympiad presidents who were experiencing the same setbacks. To my surprise, I found that almost every club president had trouble with funding. I discovered that teams that were newly-established or poorly-funded were the most hit by the pandemic, but many of these teams had leaders who were particularly driven. Having solely concentrated on my own team up to that point, joining a community of like-minded leaders shifted my focus away from my own problems, which were relatively small, towards larger, community-centered problems. One team president who inspired me was Spoorthi, who had just formed a Science Olympiad team at her school in Washington. Despite her strengths, her team was in even worse shape than mine: without school funding for materials and tournament registration fees, she was having trouble recruiting students. I quickly realized that Science Olympiad teams nationwide needed something that they could rally around—something affordable and accessible. “Here’s a crazy idea,” I said to Spoorthi in September. “Let’s host an affordable tournament for teams all across the nation. Thousands of students are looking for ways to diversify their science backgrounds, so let’s give them one. No one ever said high schoolers can’t hold their own tournaments!” Spoorthi enthusiastically agreed, and we immediately made plans to gather a core team for the tournament. Working together, we immediately started constructing the tournament. As a new leader, Spoorthi assisted me in planning and helped manage the rest of the core team. I quickly got in contact with Thuan, the webmaster of the site that would host our invitational, and Peter, a National Science Olympiad administrator who had previously helped organize other online tournaments. Shreya worked on our outreach website while Maria created our Instagram page. The rest of the team started creating test questions for twenty events, including everything from Circuit Lab to Ornithology. Opening the virtual tournament to all teams nationwide, we dubbed the tournament the “Transcontinental Invitational.” Moreover, the tournament was one of the most affordable national Science Olympiad competitions this year. Every single day from then on, our team worked tirelessly to organize the tournament. We spent weeks determining the estimated cost of medals and trophies, setting up the payment system, configuring the testing site, publicizing the tournament on social media, and writing tests for the tournament. After much deliberation, we calculated a registration fee that would allow us to break even on the cost of running the tournament. We would charge $30 per team—one third the price of a standard tournament hosted by college students across the nation. I excitedly spread the word in multiple Science Olympiad communities, hoping the affordable cost would attract newly-formed and poorly-funded teams. Almost immediately, the Transcontinental Invitational was a hit. By the end of October, we had gathered 85 teams from 18 different states, including Kentucky, Hawaii, and Mississippi. Over 1,000 students registered for the online testing site, ready to demonstrate their scientific talent on tournament day. In our core team’s meeting right before the competition, I could see everyone’s exhaustion from the countless hours we had put into constructing the tournament. However, our goal to expose students across the nation to diverse STEM subjects fueled me and the rest of the team to continue. When tournament weekend finally came, I felt fresh and energized. On the day of the test—which was also my 18th birthday—an unforeseeable server outage caused all students’ answers to stop saving in the middle of their exams. Sitting in my mom’s car, I suddenly received dozens of emails, calls, and text messages. I responded to each message with a careful, measured response, and when I arrived home, Spoorthi and I spent 5 hours tracing the issue and coordinating extensions. When the problem was finally fixed at 11 PM, I collapsed into my chair. It was difficult, but I was proud to have made the tournament equitable and successful. Within hours of the tournament’s conclusion, emails began to trickle into the Transcontinental inbox. Spoorthi and I received countless compliments from Science Olympiad coaches across the nation, and one coach from Kentucky even reached out to my school’s principal to commend my success. The National Science Olympiad newsletter even shouted us out in December. Within three years, my efforts have expanded from school- to national-level, and my ambition to provide better STEM opportunities pushes me to continue. Now, not only do I want to be an academic, but I also aspire to be a STEM education advocate—specifically a Science Olympiad state director in charge of expanding STEM’s scope in my region. My Science Olympiad experiences have inspired me to seek out ways to provide better STEM opportunities wherever I go. The youth are our future, and equipping them with more exposure to STEM outside normal classes is essential to progress technology and humanity.

Online data is ubiquitous, and data as a currency is only becoming more valuable; however, data markets are complex and socially sensitive. According to the Harvard Business Review, Germans are willing to pay up to $184 to protect their individual health data, while people in the United States and China are quick to sell their data at single-digit prices. These variabilities provide an important context for the trend of data commodification. In the rush to convert data into assets, I need to carefully consider this variability in cultural values as I engineer my own privacy algorithms. This issue is especially interesting since it dovetails with one of my long-term goals: to collaborate with other researchers to design breakthrough privacy-preserving cryptographic algorithms that will help us win the race against hackers and data infiltrators. To achieve that goal, I will need to take into account many different sociocultural realities. Ensuring that organizations handle data ethically is important, but it is only one side of the coin. Government legislation and industry practice need to match the interests of the public and cooperate on privacy-preserving algorithms, acknowledging that different societies value privacy differently. Created in conjunction with cultural values, a universal, unbreakable privacy-preserving algorithm is the end goal of cryptographic research. If organizations cannot keep up with the evolution of data-breaching technology, the data of billions of people could be compromised. Many contemporary examples of data breaches exist: Equifax in 2017, Marriott in 2018, and Facebook in 2019. These attacks leave customers feeling that they cannot do anything to prevent their data from being stolen. In addition, these breaches undermine the entire data industry: no matter the cultural values of data involved, a data breach is a data breach. I aspire to work alongside other bright researchers to advance privacy definitions and apply them to algorithms that prevent next-generation data attacks. Earning a BS in Computer Science and receiving a PhD in post-quantum cryptography, I will have the knowledge necessary to join a research group specialized in developing privacy definitions such as differential privacy. Inevitably, due to the constant evolution of hacking and increasing integration of quantum technology in computer systems, differential privacy will become outdated unless researchers develop stronger definitions of privacy that can be applied in the post-quantum world. Strengthening data privacy by developing privacy-preserving algorithms is one of my major goals, but I also acknowledge that in the current data market, many companies trade and sell data to other organizations without users even knowing. By developing stronger notions of privacy, I would be perpetuating these companies’ ethically questionable behavior. Therefore, another one of my long-term goals is to drive the data-handling and data-mining industry to a more ethical level that would allow people to build trust with the organizations to which they give their data away while permitting companies to continue to utilize data trends and better their products and services. One particular company I am interested in researching under is Google. Google was the first major technology company to release its own differential privacy system, RAPPOR, which was arguably the first system that brought the notion of differential privacy to the public. Companies such as Apple soon followed Google’s lead. Now, Google is expanding its mission to develop privacy-preserving mechanisms in machine learning by releasing TensorFlow Privacy, an open-source library released in early 2019. Google’s privacy mission matches my own career goal to be on the cutting edge of the data privacy field. As I look to my future career, I aspire to research at a big-tech company like Google, specializing in developing privacy definitions.

Online data is ubiquitous, and data as a currency is only becoming more valuable; however, data markets are complex and socially sensitive. According to the Harvard Business Review, Germans are willing to pay up to $184 to protect their individual health data, while people in the United States and China are quick to sell their data at single-digit prices. These variabilities provide an important context for the trend of data commodification. In the rush to convert data into assets, I need to carefully consider this variability in cultural values as I engineer my own privacy algorithms. This issue is especially interesting since it dovetails with one of my long-term goals: to collaborate with other researchers to design breakthrough privacy-preserving cryptographic algorithms that will help us win the race against hackers and data infiltrators. To achieve that goal, I will need to take into account many different sociocultural realities. Ensuring that organizations handle data ethically is important, but it is only one side of the coin. Government legislation and industry practice need to match the interests of the public and cooperate on privacy-preserving algorithms, acknowledging that different societies value privacy differently. Created in conjunction with cultural values, a universal, unbreakable privacy-preserving algorithm is the end goal of cryptographic research. If organizations cannot keep up with the evolution of data-breaching technology, the data of billions of people could be compromised. Many contemporary examples of data breaches exist: Equifax in 2017, Marriott in 2018, and Facebook in 2019. These attacks leave customers feeling that they cannot do anything to prevent their data from being stolen. In addition, these breaches undermine the entire data industry: no matter the cultural values of data involved, a data breach is a data breach. I aspire to work alongside other bright researchers to advance privacy definitions and apply them to algorithms that prevent next-generation data attacks. Earning a BS in Computer Science and receiving a PhD in post-quantum cryptography, I will have the knowledge necessary to join a research group specialized in developing privacy definitions such as differential privacy. Inevitably, due to the constant evolution of hacking and increasing integration of quantum technology in computer systems, differential privacy will become outdated unless researchers develop stronger definitions of privacy that can be applied in the post-quantum world. Strengthening data privacy by developing privacy-preserving algorithms is one of my major goals, but I also acknowledge that in the current data market, many companies trade and sell data to other organizations without users even knowing. By developing stronger notions of privacy, I would be perpetuating these companies’ ethically questionable behavior. Therefore, another one of my long-term goals is to drive the data-handling and data-mining industry to a more ethical level that would allow people to build trust with the organizations to which they give their data away while permitting companies to continue to utilize data trends and better their products and services. One particular company I am interested in researching under is Google. Google was the first major technology company to release its own differential privacy system, RAPPOR, which was arguably the first system that brought the notion of differential privacy to the public. Companies such as Apple soon followed Google’s lead. Now, Google is expanding its mission to develop privacy-preserving mechanisms in machine learning by releasing TensorFlow Privacy, an open-source library released in early 2019. Google’s privacy mission matches my own career goal to be on the cutting edge of the data privacy field. As I look to my future career, I aspire to research at a big-tech company like Google, specializing in developing privacy definitions.

My favorite film of all-time is "Parasite" by Bong Joon-ho. The movie is packed with symbolism and horror, and the plot escalates so rapidly that a viewer would most likely be completely lost if he/she fast-forwarded 10 minutes. Bong Joon-ho does a spectacular job of using minute details to portray the stark contrast between the rich house and overpopulated slums. For example, when the “parasite” family members flee the rich family’s exorbitant house in fear of being caught, they descend several flights of stairs into the slums. In the scene, the camera pans out to capture the entire journey down the stairs, signifying that running downstairs represents the parasite family members returning from the top of the social ladder to where they belong: semi-basements filled with trash. Another significant detail in the film occurs after the slums living in semi-basements are devastated and displaced by the rainstorm during the night. The scene shows hundreds of people from the slums waking up on the floor in a large gym, in which they were forced to stay due to the flood. The parasite family, especially, looks absolutely filthy and miserable. Suddenly, the film cuts to a scene where the mother in the rich family is running around stores to buy cake and wine while calling up all her friends to come to celebrate at her son’s birthday party. The rich mother exclaims, “The rain was a blessing,” because it had allowed her and the rest of the rich family to stay at home to celebrate the son’s birthday. The exclamation completely contrasts the previous scene, where many had lost all their belongings in the flood. Bong Joon-ho's psychological thrill and strikingly accurate social commentary make "Parasite" my favorite film. This masterpiece should be a staple for all who participate in our society.

“Chemistry kits, PVC pipes, or both?” I asked, editing the agenda. Earlier in 10th grade, I had emailed Mrs. Sullivan, my 8th-grade science teacher, proposing that we create a Science Olympiad team at East Ridge Middle School. I recalled how limited my science knowledge was by 8th grade, when I barely grasped physical and life science basics. I sought to expose Ridgefield’s middle schoolers to a wider array of science topics—including forensics, epidemiology, and circuitry—and help them get head starts to STEM careers. Mrs. Sullivan and I recruited 20 middle schoolers and registered East Ridge in the state league. Several high school Science Olympiad captains and I volunteered weekly to coach the students in the 23 events. In addition, I regularly tutored four middle schoolers in Circuit Lab, Heredity, and Fossils. One 7th-grader particularly inspired me. As soon as she was assigned the Ornithology event, she convinced her parents to purchase a bird field guide. During study meetings, she sat alone, excitedly typing up notes as she flipped through the guide. Her determination to learn ornithology touched my heart and reaffirmed my mission to provide middle schoolers more STEM opportunities. In January, I helped bring the team to the Sacred Heart Invitational—their first science competition—and the students placed 4th out of Connecticut teams. This motivated them even further to practice for States. Seeing that STEM had become important to the students, I felt accomplished and proud. Since then, I have continued to mentor them and provide competitive STEM opportunities. This year, after noticing many teams nationwide had lost school funding, I became determined to provide an affordable tournament targeted at newly-formed and financially challenged teams. I directed the Transcontinental Invitational, a national tournament hosting 85 teams from 18 states. My competition reached over 1,000 students and earned recognition from the national Science Olympiad organization. Within three years, my efforts have expanded from school- to community- to national-level, and my ambition to provide better STEM opportunities pushes me to continue. Now, not only do I want to be an academic, but I also aspire to be a STEM education advocate—specifically a Science Olympiad state director in charge of expanding STEM’s scope in my region. My Science Olympiad experiences have inspired me to seek out ways to provide better STEM opportunities wherever I go. The youth are our future, and equipping them with more exposure to STEM outside normal classes is essential to progress technology and humanity.

At the beginning of 2020, it was easy for people to feel isolated and lose touch with the world. However, I put in extra effort to apply to and attend programs and competitions. My most significant experience was the Research Science Institute (RSI), where I developed a passion in computer science research. When my acceptance into RSI came, I was ecstatic. I would finally have better resources, such as cutting-edge labs and computers with more RAM, to conduct my own research. Moreover, I would meet 83 aspiring researchers and learn about other scientific disciplines. When RSI was moved online, I was devastated. But I wasn’t going to let the pandemic devalue my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. From day one, I poured all my effort into learning from my mentor and meeting fellow researchers. Every morning, I Zoomed my mentor to discuss my research and learn quantum computing. Then, I zealously researched on my own, constantly emailing my mentor with new findings. I spent my remaining time learning as much as I could about other projects. In fact, I quickly became known as the “Lounge King” for staying in the shared Zoom call all-day, eager to listen to other students drop in and discuss their research progress. When my paper was named a Top 5 Written Presentation, I felt my efforts pay off. Additionally, RSI allowed me to forge connections with other researchers. Today, I still contact the students I met in the Lounge, and the knowledge I gained from their projects helps me in all kinds of unexpected situations. Who would’ve known that two-sided matching would come up on my microeconomics test? Taking full advantage of RSI helped me develop my skills and passion in scientific research. Now, I’m thriving in two different research groups consisting of researchers from across the world. As I look to my future career, I aspire to research at a big tech company such as Google, collaborating with other bright minds and creating technology to pave the way for humanity's future.

In January 2020, I flew 1,836 miles alone to Denver, Colorado to present my data privacy research project, "Differentially Private M-band Wavelet-Based Mechanisms in Machine Learning Environments." I did everything by myself--hotel arrangement, transportation, presentation of my project--and achieved the distinction "Outstanding Undergraduate Research Poster" as a high schooler!

Online data is ubiquitous, and data as a currency is only becoming more valuable; however, data markets are complex and socially sensitive. According to the Harvard Business Review, Germans are willing to pay up to $184 to protect their individual health data, while people in the United States and China are quick to sell their data at single-digit prices. These variabilities provide an important context for the trend of data commodification. In the rush to convert data into assets, I need to carefully consider this variability in cultural values as I engineer my own privacy algorithms. This issue is especially interesting since it dovetails with one of my long-term goals: to collaborate with other researchers to design breakthrough privacy-preserving cryptographic algorithms that will help us win the race against hackers and data infiltrators. To achieve that goal, I will need to take into account many different sociocultural realities. Ensuring that organizations handle data ethically is important, but it is only one side of the coin. Government legislation and industry practice need to match the interests of the public and cooperate on privacy-preserving algorithms, acknowledging that different societies value privacy differently. Created in conjunction with cultural values, a universal, unbreakable privacy-preserving algorithm is the end goal of cryptographic research. If organizations cannot keep up with the evolution of data-breaching technology, the data of billions of people could be compromised. Many contemporary examples of data breaches exist: Equifax in 2017, Marriott in 2018, and Facebook in 2019. These attacks leave customers feeling that they cannot do anything to prevent their data from being stolen. In addition, these breaches undermine the entire data industry: no matter the cultural values of data involved, a data breach is a data breach. I aspire to work alongside other bright researchers to advance privacy definitions and apply them to algorithms that prevent next-generation data attacks. Majoring in computer science and receiving a PhD in post-quantum cryptography, I will have the knowledge necessary to join a research group specialized in developing privacy definitions such as differential privacy. Inevitably, due to the constant evolution of hacking and increasing integration of quantum technology in computer systems, differential privacy will become outdated unless researchers develop stronger definitions of privacy that can be applied in the post-quantum world. Harvard will prepare me to adapt to the growth of effective data breach techniques and create new privacy-preserving algorithms. Strengthening data privacy by developing privacy-preserving algorithms is one of my major goals, but I also acknowledge that in the current data market, many companies trade and sell data to other organizations without users even knowing. By developing stronger notions of privacy, I would be perpetuating these companies’ ethically questionable behavior. Therefore, another one of my long-term goals is to drive the data-handling and data-mining industry to a more ethical level that would allow people to build trust with the organizations to which they give their data away while permitting companies to continue to utilize data trends and better their products and services. My research experiences in computer science and data privacy have particularly piqued my interest in researching at Google, the first major technology company to release its own differential privacy system, RAPPOR. Google and, soon, other big tech companies, brought the notion of next-generation data privacy definitions to the public. As I look to my future career, I wish to be on the data privacy field's cutting edge. I aspire to research in big tech, specializing in developing privacy definitions.