Prize Recipient

Luis C. Vargas

Background:

I am currently a junior at the University of Kansas. My parents and I moved to the United States four years ago from Lima, Peru. I was lucky to have had a strong English language education in my Peruvian school, and thus was able to take challenging classes while a junior and senior in high school in Wichita, KS. By taking AP Physics and Calculus, I became more certain that I wanted to follow physics as a career. As for many people, however, my original interest in the physical sciences started in astronomy. Star gazing itself was not a very entertaining activity where I lived, because of the almost perpetually clouded skies of Lima. It was reading as a kid about different types of stars and how they evolved over time (in a very qualitative level, of course!) which I found fascinating. At the present moment I have a certain inclination towards specializing in stellar or galactic astrophysics, but it is still premature to decide.

Other activities I enjoy are playing ping-pong and tennis, playing piano, listening to classical music, reading realistic science fiction and Latin American literature, playing board games, and learning more about East Asian cultures.