Charis is a high-school student from Hong Kong who aims to reach her full potential and to inspire others to do the same. Her dedication to astrophysics, her main interest, runs on her curiosity and passion for the mysteries that await to be solved.
Growing up, she has always taken a liking to the sciences and in particular biology, until she went on a stargazing trip in Taiwan that opened her eyes to the million bright stars in the dark. It was a stark reminder that beyond herself and the people beside her and the world and Earth as she knows it, there is the deep space — light years upon light years of murky space of which no one knows anything yet.
Since then, she sought opportunities to enrich herself with knowledge of this kind, which led her to join the Houston Space School Program and receive the Academic Excellence Award, a 3-phase astronomy course led by the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education, and the Greater Bay Area Astronomer Challenge in which she won silver. During all this, she kept researching by herself with the help of books, the internet, and several mentors and teachers who were supportive of her interest. Earlier in 2023 in April, she fulfilled her goal of completing a research project, with a 3500-word paper on measuring the height of a lunar mountain using the length of its shadow.
Charis’ next goal in life is to study astrophysics in a top university in the US or the UK. To do this, she is taking astronomy as an elective in physics for the public exam, and dedicated herself to studying for SAT and A-level Maths outside the school curriculum. She has also led research projects and activities in the Maths Team and Science Society at school in the hopes that more people can share her love and passion for astronomy, the same reason she has opened this platform. It was her own story of gradually getting into astrophysics and receiving much support from some teachers, as well as witnessing how simply and concisely complex concepts are explained in the book that inspired her the most — A Brief History of Time, that made her believe that anyone can take up astrophysics and grow to like it.
After graduating from university, Charis plans to pursue a career in research on astrophysics, with the aspiration of changing and contributing to the world one day.
