Meet Sophia

My name is Sophia. I am 17 years old and I live in Juneau, Alaska. I am a member of the 2023 Flight Crew. I have been interested in STEM since elementary school, when I decided that I wanted to be a chemist or an astronomer, while also attending robotics camps.

Chemistry was the easiest of those interests to study at home by experimenting in my own kitchen, and I have been applying my knowledge to designing my own experiments and recipes for years. The more experience I got in chemistry, the more I became interested in the reactions in outer space that lead to phenomena like neutron stars and black holes, an interest that began to shift my focus towards physics.

I have participated in the robotics club at my school for several years, during which I have learned to program in both Java and Python and taught myself computer animated design and 3D printing. The past two years, I have led my robotics team in organizing assemblies at local elementary schools to get kids interested in STEM, as well as in numerous other outreach events.

My dream job is to work at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland as an astrophysicist. To achieve this goal, I am looking into going to college in North Carolina at one of the four schools that are part of the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, where I hope to be able to do nuclear research before I graduate college.