I spent a week at UCLA learning about nanoscience. Nanoscience is the study of structures and materials on a scale of nanometers. During my week at UCLA, we learned 5 themes- Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Dye- Sensitized Solar Cells, Biotoxicity, Photolithography, and Supercapacitors. Each day we were focused on one of those five themes and we had a lab, lecture from a scientist who did research on it, and afterward looked at nanotechnologies that aid its study. Each lab we did was very hands-on and enjoyable. One of my favorite was making the supercapacitors, where we used copper to make a nano-rough surface which allowed it to have a larger surface area than a normal capacitor. The larger surface area permitted a supercapacitor to gather more energy in a shorter period of time. Although my week at UCLA was very fun, I still had work to be done every night. Each day, we were assigned homework where we had to draw an analogy of the topic we were learning. This assignment was difficult since we could only use words as labels and make someone who doesn’t have an in-depth understanding of our topic have a basic understanding of it with our drawings afterward. Surprisingly, I had fun doing the homework, since I got to be creative with my analogies. My favorite was depicting the characters of Despicable Me as silver nanoparticles, silver powder, silver nitrate, and yeast in our topic of Biotoxicity. As the end of the program was closing in, we had to do our final presentation. In groups of three, we randomly received a homework assignment from that week and got one hour to figure out its analogy and present it in front of undergraduate, graduate, professors, parents, and our peers. However, my group took the initiative to be one of the two special groups where we had to draw a new analogy of the topic we learned that day, which so happened to be Supercapacitor.

This week taught me how nanoscience is an important and innovating field that is affecting our world. So far, it has impacted our lives with new innovations, such as stain resistant fabrics inspired by the nanoscale features found on lotus plant and making our technologies smaller and more effective. A very inspiring person who helped us was Sarah Tolbert who discussed her research, introduced us to nanoscience, and one of the main facilitator for our final presentation on Friday.

This past school year was a busy one for me due to AP classes and joining track and field. However, I learned to manage my time better and was able to balance my classes and extracurricular activities with ease. This allowed me to maintain a 4.0 weighted GPA and make it to All City for track and field.

There's a little under a month left until I attend UCLA Nanoscience Summer Lab Institute. I'm nervous to leave my family for a week, but I’m also very excited to work on my independence and attend an amazing program that will deepen my understanding of nanoscience and nanotechnology. I think this program will be really useful in helping me to further understand the right career path for me.