I'm a high-schooler at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. I study optical quantum computing, and I spend an unreasonable amount of my free time building atom traps in the lab.
Most of what I do starts the same way: a hard problem, a pile of parts, and the quiet hope that a student can build the real thing. That's taken me from neutral-atom optical tweezers to an accessibility startup, a couple of finance papers with a professor, and a device that repairs pipes from the inside.
I'm just as interested in the people side of building. I've captained a robotics team across all of its build, programming, and outreach divisions, served as a crisis director and webmaster in Model UN, and tutored higher-level math and English, and I've found that the projects that actually ship are the ones where the team communicates well.
When I'm not in a lab or a CAD file, I'm playing viola, 3-D printing something, cooking, public speaking, or reading far too much news.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA. Diploma expected June 2027. GPA 4.44 / 3.95 (weighted / unweighted).
University-level physics, the backbone of the quantum-hardware work. AP Physics C: Mechanics (4), Electromagnetism (4).
The math toolkit behind the modeling, controls, and signal-processing projects.
Software foundations for everything from pathfinding to the Swype AI signal pipeline.
Note: AP courses whose scores aren't listed are being taken this school year.