Throughout these last couple of months Rachel and I released 3 podcast episodes!! The earliest one was with Kevin Davies, an author, journal editor and publisher who specializes in genomics, personalized medicine and the Human Genome Project! Kevin is the author of five popular science books, has held several prominent editorial and publishing positions, has also worked at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. It was awesome talking with Kevin about everything CRISPR! Our 2nd episode this month was with Christine Gould, a global leader and expert in agri-food-tech innovation and the CEO and founder of Thought For Food, a global community of 30 thousand Millennial and GenZ from over 175 different countries! It was amazing talking with Christine about multispectral thinking, Thought for Food, entrepreneurial thinking, and so much more! Lastly, but not least, our third episode of the month featured Dana Ware! Dana has lots of experience working in various production roles and in the recent years has jumped into creating experiences in Virtual/Augmented reality! After designing and teaching courses about the intersection between film and VR/AR, she went on to work as a creative director for companies like The VOID and Dark Slope, and speak at numerous conferences. It was wonderful talking with Dana about location-based entertainment, what it's like being a creative director, and her experience being a minority in STEM. You can tune in to all of those episodes via our podcast website which is linked above!

Throughout April and early May I worked on the Moonshot challenge with my team. This challenge was all about thinking 5-10 years in the future and coming up with a 10x solution to a problem. My team and I decided to focus in on water scarcity, specifically on how we could effectively use wastewater to create a circular water system. Our solution consisted on 3 steps:

1. Using urine diverting toilet to separate urine from feces
2. Turning feces into activated carbon 
3. Using activated carbon (along with a couple other methods) to purify wastewater

This project definitely took a lot of research and external meetings, but I'm so glad my team and I made sure to prioritize having fun as well! 

Joining Character Lab Youth Council

Earlier this May, I got accepted to join the Character Lab Youth Council, a group of 16 other youth advisors from across the country working alongside Character Lab staff and partners to develop a new, accessible, and engaging research platform for youth! So far I've had a great time giving feedback and brainstorming new ideas with the team and I'm excited to continue doing so for the next 3 months!

Getting into Activate

Earlier last month I got the news that I was accepted into Activate, the second year program for TKS! I've truly enjoyed and have grown so much from just this year in the Innovate program and I'm so excited to continue that growth next year. I've had the opportunity to meet with many Activate students and hear from there perspective how the program has helped them grow so much, so definitely looking forward to joining the program!