The saying, "If you want a village, you must be a villager,” highlights a profound truth: dedication to your community requires consistently showing up. For me, that mindset began at my desk, surrounded by skeins of yarn. What began as my creative outlet evolved into my online business, Lily’s Crocheted Corner, where I was not only technically challenged by custom orders but, more importantly, I learned how to align initiative with philanthropy by committing to donate 25% of all revenue, ultimately giving over $1,000 to various charities. That early project showed me my “why”: I wanted to use my skills to create a lasting impact on others. As I navigated high school, however, that core purpose deepened as I faced my own challenges. As an underclassman dealing with autism and ADHD, I often felt isolated and underrepresented in my STEM courses, surrounded by male peers who seemed far more confident and successful than I was. But soon I found guidance from my teachers and mentors, started to believe in myself, and realized that what young women like me needed was for someone to believe in them so they could believe in themselves. This realization drove me to double major in Astrophysics and Geophysics with a minor in French at UC Berkeley. I am pursuing this degree both to answer fundamental questions about our universe and to dismantle systemic barriers, becoming the empowering mentor I once needed. But true progress comes from community-centered leadership rather than technical knowledge. At my local library, showing up week after week with elementary students, watching initially shy students transform into self-assured readers taught me that empowerment starts with creating spaces where people feel safe enough to try, fail, try again, and finally succeed. At UC Berkeley, that understanding has evolved into a broader commitment to equity and belonging. I bring these ideas into my leadership roles within Space Technologies at Cal (STAC) and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Knowing firsthand just how real imposter syndrome can be, I hope to open doors, share resources, and ensure everyone knows they belong and can thrive in science. But my journey represents far more than just my own ambitions. Both of my parents grew up in extreme poverty, working tirelessly to provide me with the opportunities they never had. My mom was the first in her family to ever attend college, balancing night school with a full-time job and proudly earning her degree at 35. Her determination instilled in me the values of hard work and self-belief that drive me every day. I want to honor my family’s sacrifices, but attending UC Berkeley as an out-of-state student comes with a significant financial burden of $85,000 per year. Balancing a rigorous double major, neurodivergence, and the necessity of part-time work creates a constant risk of burnout. The $2,500 Sloane Stephens Doc & Glo Scholarship will directly offset roughly 130 hours of minimum-wage work, protecting the critical time and energy I need to study, lead, and volunteer. This support will allow me to fully immerse myself in my coursework and research at Berkeley. After graduation, I intend to pursue a Ph.D. at a French university, leveraging my language background to foster international scientific collaboration. Ultimately, as a scientific researcher, I plan to establish internship and scholarship programs for underrepresented youth in STEM worldwide, making education and mentorship accessible to everyone. By supporting my education, you will not just be funding my degree; you will be investing in the legacy of my family’s hard work while empowering me to extend that success to the next generation of diverse scientists.

I want to be an outstanding astrophysicist who works among the brightest minds to solve some of our biggest questions about the nature of the universe, such as ‘What is dark matter?’ and ‘Why are black holes so big?’ Having experienced the profound impact of my own NASA internship, I want to mentor underrepresented young women in STEM and establish structured internship and scholarship programs for them. To execute this plan, I have developed a detailed budget. My remaining out-of-state costs at UC Berkeley total $202,830 over three years, including tuition ($138,065), housing with summer sublease adjustments ($48,800), and study abroad in France ($15,965). My parents are going to cover my housing, but to avoid drowning in student loans, I still need $154,030, or $4,279 per month. That’s a lot. At minimum wage, that’s 55 hours per week. As a full-time student, that is genuinely impossible. So, I have turned to scholarships. If each scholarship is about $1,000, that means I have to win 4-5 scholarships each month, and at 3-5 hours of work per scholarship, that’s a much more reasonable workload of 12-25 hours per month. So far, I have applied to over 112 scholarships since the start of my senior year of high school and have won $5,250. Despite many rejections, I have kept on applying, trying to improve every application. Currently, I have 301 scholarships saved in my spreadsheet totaling to $653,798, and I’m constantly adding more. In high school, I laid the groundwork by taking over 22 advanced courses, earning enough credit to knock out my general education requirements. Now, as a sophomore at UC Berkeley, I’ve translated that momentum into action. Every step of my undergraduate career has been taken intentionally. To broaden my skills across fields, I decided to double major in Astrophysics and Geophysics. To fill a critical gap between theory and hardware, I joined a mechanical engineering team in a space club and eventually became the team lead. To empower our members and projects, I was elected as Financial Director and External Partnerships Chair. This semester, I am expanding this by applying to join faculty-led research groups and to join one of the Society of Women Engineers’ committees to teach high school girls how to code. All these roles build the resume I need to win scholarships and secure admission to graduate school. For grad school, I have an equally rigorous plan. Over the past six years, I have studied French, and now I’m minoring in it! I truly have fallen in love with the language, so I plan to pursue my master’s and Ph.D. at a French university. This would open up many amazing opportunities, given the proximity to CERN and other major European research institutes. Astrophysics is increasingly becoming a more collaborative field, and being abroad puts me in a good spot, not only career-wise but also financially. While, similarly to the U.S., Ph.D. programs in France are fully funded, master’s programs are much cheaper, with non-EU tuition at $4,600 per year. And with fellowships specifically targeted at U.S. students, such as the Lafayette or Eiffel Excellence ones, the two-year program can be completely free. These are big goals, but as Joe Gilroy must have known, any goal, big or small, can be achieved if you break it down into small enough steps. Following this plan, I can graduate debt-free with all three degrees and start a lifelong career of discovery, answering our biggest questions about the universe while empowering the next generation of scientists.

What I love most about astrophysics is that it’s like a puzzle. You have to decode the universe through limited clues. I'm fascinated by how scientists make sense of the invisible, whether it's interpreting planetary pasts from surface clues or uncovering unseen particles from indirect evidence, and by the possibility of using those clues to discover something no one has before. The idea of learning so much from so little is what draws me to both astrogeology and astroparticle physics. In astroparticle physics, to detect what is only theoretical, we have to do so indirectly. You can only identify the final products of particle interactions, so you have to use the initial and final states to infer the intermediate states. Finding these particles is like solving a cosmic murder mystery: you only know so much, and you have to trace back the steps to see if something new was created along the way. Similarly, in astrogeology, this happens by examining physical properties such as composition; we can use just a few grams of material to unlock billions of years of history. This pursuit of piecing together incomplete evidence to reconstruct hidden stories is the reasoning behind everything I do. Because the universe leaves so few clues, my search for answers has evolved with time. Initially, I devoured library books and watched every YouTube lecture I could find. But eventually I realized that if I wanted to answer questions no one had solved yet, reading about past discoveries wasn’t enough; I needed to become one of the scientists making them. But as a young woman in STEM, I often felt isolated and underrepresented in my classes, surrounded by male peers who seemed far more confident and successful than I was. Finding guidance from mentors at school and during my NASA SEES internship helped me recognize my potential and turn my passion into a greater purpose. I wanted to be a mentor, just like the women who helped me. That realization ultimately led me to where I am now at UC Berkeley, studying both Astrophysics and Geophysics, building the skills to make my own discoveries. Ultimately, I chose my majors because they give me a way to inspire others and change what people believe is possible. Watching the excitement surrounding the Artemis II mission reminded me of this. Space exploration doesn’t just answer questions about our universe; it brings people together and sparks new dreams. This is why I’m passionate about diversity in STEM. I believe it fuels innovation and discovery. When researchers from diverse backgrounds collaborate, they can solve universe-sized problems. As lead of my mechanical engineering team designing a zero-gravity biological experiment, I put this belief into practice every day. Technical problem-solving is only half the job; the rest is fostering an environment where everyone feels welcome and that they can contribute meaningfully. Ultimately, I want my career to leave a lasting impact beyond the lab. My early mentors gave me the reassurance I needed to believe I belonged in science, and my goal as an astrophysicist is to pay that forward. I hope to continue my leadership throughout college and one day build structured internship and scholarship initiatives for underrepresented women in STEM. By serving as an advisor and advocate for young women coming up behind me, I want to help the next generation find the confidence, drive, and resources to make their own mark on the world. Because if we can launch ourselves into space and uncover particles we cannot even see, then even our biggest mysteries can be solved when we lift each other up.

I clicked on the video out of curiosity. Its title promised me a “TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time.” It was full of concepts that I’d never heard of before: Hawking radiation, heat death, and dark energy. After watching, a flame ignited inside me; nothing had ever captured my desire to learn more so instantly. From that moment, I tried to incorporate astrophysics into my life wherever I could: in books, in conversations, everywhere. What drew me in was the ability to answer fundamental questions, such as "What are dark matter and dark energy?" or “Why is Earth the only planet with plate tectonics?” But we need to do more than just find answers to our current questions; we need to inspire the next generation that will answer the questions that come after. While research is my primary passion, I always wanted to be a teacher as a kid, and I still love teaching as much as I love discovery, which I have expressed through my roles as co-president of the Astronomy Club and as a volunteer at my local library. What motivates my desire to teach and mentor others stems from my identity and experiences in STEM. As a queer autistic woman in STEM, I am aware that I will likely face barriers on my journey. Already, I have dealt with underrepresentation and seen the misogyny that my female peers face. I know how isolating it can feel to have no one else like you. These experiences have made me passionate about creating a welcoming scientific community for everyone. I’ve tried to do so in Astronomy club by selecting equitable officer teams and encouraging younger girls to take leadership roles in science. In my roles as lead of my engineering team and external partnerships chair next semester, I will aim to help others feel included through my presence and actions, and I hope to lead initiatives that increase access to STEM for underrepresented students. But, to make a lasting social and scientific impact, I must build a strong academic foundation. I’m currently deciding between two specific fields within astrophysics: astrogeology, where I can explore the origins of life and planets, and cosmology, where I can investigate the nature of the universe itself. I’m equally excited about both fields and my continued exploration of them at UC Berkeley through my double major in astrophysics and geophysics. Whichever path I choose, I want to work as a lead scientific researcher and professor at a university or other research institution (such as NASA, CERN, or LIGO). As only a rising sophomore, I have three more years of undergrad to narrow down my interests and immerse myself in various topics. Afterward, I hope to earn my PhD in astrophysics, equipping me with the tools and education necessary for my field. Between astrophysics lectures, geology labs, CADing for my mechanical engineering team, and meetings for my gravitational microlensing research group, Berkeley has pushed me to embrace uncertainty and think deeply. The many times I’ve had to debug my code while running our machine learning model have shown me the power of perseverance, allowing us to successfully build and run it and eventually compare the accuracy of different methods. My first year has confirmed that I thrive when challenged by creative problem-solving, all conditions that mirror the kind of career I am working toward. I have no doubt that my past experiences and continued growth at Berkeley will enable me to spend my life answering unsolved questions about our universe while inspiring the next generation of scientists in my community.

I clicked on the video out of curiosity. Its title promised me a “Timelapse of the Future” and I wondered what that would look like. It started out slow with a narrator speaking of human advancement, but that wasn’t the best part. It was after. Trillions of billions of years into the future, where all that was left of the universe were stars slowly dying out or bursting into black holes. This is where it got interesting. The video spoke of multiple universes trapped within one another, dark energy pushing our expanding universe to expand faster, and of heat death, the predicted end of our universe. Many people might have found that terrifying, but not me. I was amazed. I had never heard of such things: black holes withering away, the death of heat itself, and a universe made of 97% mystery. It lit a spark within me that grew into a fire that continues to drive me. There was so much we didn’t know or understand, and I wanted to be a part of solving it. I want to discover the unknowns of the universe and answer our biggest questions about it. How did it begin? How is it evolving? What will become of it? I hope to contribute to our understanding of the Big Bang, planetary formation, dark energy, and cosmic expansion while bringing others along with me in that pursuit. After that video, I took up everything related to astrophysics that I could. I bought and read every book I could get my hands on. I took the highest-level physics classes that I could. I joined my school’s astronomy club and eventually became the president. I volunteered as a math tutor and at the library, helping kids read about science, too. In little moments, I saw the impact of the roles I took up. A kid’s grandfather pulling me aside after our astronomy demonstration and saying, “Thank you, he’s never had anyone to talk to about space before.” Reading feedback from people I tutored for the SAT: “You’ve made me a better test taker!!” Joining the library Zoom, seeing a little girl’s excited face, ready to read another book together. Messages in my yearbook from astronomy club officers telling me how much they had learned, and now, as they became co-presidents, they followed in my footsteps. While I do not plan to teach in a classroom, I hope to mentor, inspire, and make science accessible to others throughout my career as an astrophysicist. I want to help others discover their love and passion for STEM as I did. Through outreach programs for students worldwide, I hope to mentor others who, like me, once felt like there wasn’t a place for them in STEM. I wish to conduct research that not only explores the mysteries of the universe but also informs the public about my discoveries through outreach, making science more available to everyone. While the scientific community has made great strides in discovery and diversity, there is still much distance to cover, and I want to be a part of pushing our understanding further while including everyone. Because to truly understand the universe, we will need every outside-of-the-box idea we can get, and diversity in identity leads to diversity in thought. It all started with a time-lapse of the future. Now, I’m working to build a future where science belongs to everyone.

Yellow Group – Types of Crochet Stitches: double, single, slip, treble This group consists of different types of crochet stitches - something a bit tricky for non-fiber artists, but still recognizable through patterns (no pun intended). I have been crocheting since I was 8, meaning I’ve spent over half my life with a hook in hand. It is something I find great joy in, so much so that I started my own crochet small business on Etsy to share the stuff I make with people. Beyond that, I use my business as a small way to use what I have (lots of yarn) to make the world just a bit better by donating 25% of my revenue to charities supporting various causes. Green Group – Primitive Data Types: boolean, character, float, integer This group consists of different primitive data types – particularly those used in Java. While I once avoided all things computer science, everything changed when I learned Python as a part of my NASA internship last summer. Suddenly, I was obsessed. As a numbers-orientated person, I find coding to be quite satisfying (as long as there’s no debugging involved). I’ve since taken multiple courses in Java and integrated programming into my daily life. One of my favorite projects was using Python to spruce up my computer wallpaper, adding an auto-updating to-do list linked to my Notion page and a national day tracker (Fun fact: Today is “National Virtual Vacation Day.”) Blue Group – Single-Word Lady Gaga Songs: Americano, Monster, Starstruck, Telephone This group consists of a few of my favorite single-word Lady Gaga songs. I’ve been a Little Monster for as long as I can remember—my love for Gaga first sparked by car rides blasting ARTPOP with my dad. As a queer person, I’ve always admired how Gaga fully embraces here identity and encourages others to do the same. Her iconic music and fashion reject the idea of “normal,” which is something I deeply respect. If I had to pick a favorite? Telephone. Something about it hooked me; maybe it’s the Beyonce feature, maybe it’s the beat, or maybe it’s the nine-minute cinematic masterpiece of a music video. Purple Group - __ Star: binary, neutron, north, super This group consists of a few words that can come before star. This might be my favorite category because I want to be an astrophysicist. Next year, I’ll be majoring in Astrophysics at UC Berkeley, continuing my lifelong fascination with the cosmos. Binary and neutron stars are especially important to stellar evolution, relating back to my major, but I love that the last two words add a bit of a challenge to the puzzle. “Blank” categories are always the hardest for me, so I thought it would be fun to add one in here. At its core, “Connections” is about recognizing patterns, thinking creatively, and making sense of the seemingly unrelated. To me, that’s what problem-solving is all about—and why I find joy in everything from crocheting to coding and, of course, solving puzzles.