About Me

I'm a 17 (almost 18) year old Mexican-American Catholic girl from Southern California. I love track and field, Appalachian folk music, southwestern indigenous archaeology, and historical linguistics, among other things. I'm an aspiring bioengineer. My birthday is April 29th!

I love to sing, and I'm the official national anthem singer at my school! I've also sung at national cross country races (Hoka Postal Nationals) and professional soccer games. I have been taking singing lessons for 8 years, specializing in opera, jazz, and musical theatre. I run a non-profit to help other kids who want private music lessons, called Minim! High schoolers teach younger kids how to play an instrument for free.

I also love to draw and I won the Silver Key for the Western Region in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in 2025. I took art lessons for about a year at the beginning of high school. I mostly draw in pencil or colored pencil, but I am trying to branch out to watercolor and gouache.

Bioengineering is really one of the most interesting things I've ever read about. I've taken metagenomics, bioinformatics, and biomechanics classes both at UCSD and the Boz Institute. I was elected co-president of my high school's biotechnology club at the end of my junior year. At that time, the club wasn't really even a club, it was just a way of cataloging who was interested in taking Saturday metagenomics classes at Boz. Due to recent federal funding cuts towards science research, Boz Institute ceased its free Saturday classes. So I said: "Why can't we just have classes at school?" And so started the months-long process of getting funding, supplies, and recruiting students. We just had our first class a few weeks ago, as well as having weekly guest speakers. And now we've been asked to expand to the whole school district! I was so excited I screamed. I'm also an intern at a neurology lab.