Hello,

My name is Noah Donald and I am a Physics and Mathematics major here at The Ohio State University. I am from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and attended Mt. Lebanon High School. Here, I am currently a resident of Houston house with the rest of the STEM EE Scholars program, of which I am a member. I often play pickup soccer at the turf fields near the recreational center which stems from my high school soccer career. In high School I played center midfield on the Varsity Soccer team for three years and was a captain of the team my senior year. I really enjoyed playing with all of my friends and found a lot of success both on and off the field with the soccer program. However, since high school soccer was only a fall sport, I also played for Victory Express Soccer Club in Washington, Pennsylvania where I played outside midfield.

I decided to choose a physics major because I have always been interested in it, well ever since my grandfather helped guide me down a path toward science. My grandfather and I had a special relationship throughout my childhood. To my knowledge, my grandfather and the word science were synonymous. He was the one who sparked my interest in science and represented what all of the TV shows depicted a scientist to be. They were not only people who did incredible work, but they were also worthy of being a role model to a young elementary school kid. As a microbiologist, my grandpa would often bring me new slides to examine under my first science kit microscope that he purchased me for my birthday. Whether or not he had permission to move these slides between work and home I am not entirely sure slides, but they were always accepted with gratitude. The possibility of seeing the magnificent structure of nature in a new light was always exciting. I remember as a child looking through the microscope and being fascinated at all that I could not see with my own eyes. I was amazed that it was always there, right in front of me. This world of the invisible became the crux of my curiosity, and the love that my grandfather and I shared for it created an eternal bond between us. I saw the passion for science through his eyes and he, in turn, seemed to see the world anew through mine. It was around this time that my grandfather began to fall ill with his respiratory disease. He was in and out of the hospital more and more frequently as my elementary school days came to a close. In all of the chaos, our conversations began to diminish in frequency until the moment when they ceased altogether. In that moment, I realized that I had not only lost my grandfather, but I had also lost a teacher and a friend. My journey of discovery, which I had started hand-in- hand with my grandfather, would now have to continue alone. The seed of inspiration that he planted inside of me as a child was not concluded by his death. It was fostered by his memory and nourished by his passion as I began my journey toward adulthood. As I advanced through middle school and high school, I was once again intrigued by the questions of fundamentalism in nature. That world of the invisible, which was originally revealed to me by my grandfather through the lens of my childhood microscope, suddenly became even more focused as I learned to look at the universe through the microscope of my mind. With some time and effort, I came to discover the Standard Model of Elementary Particles. This shifted my focus away from biology and chemistry and onto my current field of interest, physics. Today I am very excited to finally be able to achieve my childhood dream and become the person I have always wanted to be.

I have a great interest in foreign languages and cultures, especially German. I took German language classes during middle school and in my first two years of high school. It was during my sophomore year of high school I received a scholarship from the Goethe Institute to travel to Duderstadt and Gottingen, Germany for three weeks with kids from all over the world to take part in language and cultural assimilation classes. This was simply the most amazing experience I have ever had and opened my eyes to just how important being part of a global community really is. Since all of the kids their were from many different parts of the world, their was a huge language barrier between everyone. However, the one language we all had in common was German. So, in order to get to know each other and understand one another, we each had to focus in on our german skills to communicate our speech and ideas. It is here that I made some great friends, and it truly is a special relationship when the only language you share in common with your best friend is German. Not only were the kids in this program incredible, but my exposure to the culture was as well. My group toured Berlin, ate at local resturaunts, visited Gottingen University, and even rode bikes together through the vast countryside. This experience truly changed my life and allowed me to leave America as an American, but return from Germany as a global citizen.

In my senior year of high school I joined my high school science club to try to conduct some form of research while still in high school. It is here that I was prompted to find a problem in society and engineer a solution to fix it. I initially though of something with lasers but quickly gave up on that, in turn to find a more simple problem. I had understood for some time that humanity was in dire need of clean water around the world, but had never really put my mind to solving it. So, I began to think of ideas and eventually came up with a design for a device that would employ several theories from fluid dynamics in physics. With the support of my physics teach, Mr. Bilak, I entered my project into two science fairs that were being held in my home town of Pittsburgh. To no evail my project got immediately dismissed among the crowd of projects in the room and I left both fairs completely frusturated at the judges for failing to see the success in my design. It was later that year that my german teacher handed me a paper to apply for another scholarship back to Germany from the Goethe Institute in Chicago. Only this time a research project was necessary as the trip was designed for STEM students only. After the incredible support from my physics teacher and the german department, I submitted my application. Two months later I was chosen as one of only fourteen students in the country to receive the scholarship. My science project was also tediously reviewed by an engineer, a computer scientist, as well as a biologist from the University of Chicago. At that point it felt incredible to know that after my project had failed at the science fairs, it had blown past all possible accomplishments they could have offered, and landed me a trip back to Germany. In this trip I explored Berlin and visited professor Ingo Rechenberg at the Technical University of Berlin. I got the opportunity to tour the Postsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Explore the University of Braunschweig, Tour the Volkswagon Autostadt, and hear a lecture from the site manager of the ESA Rosetta Mission at the German Air and Space Center (DLR). This experience brought together my two passions. I was finally able to learn about science and technology in Germany and be able to see what a german university is actually like. In the future I definitely hope that I will be able to study physics somewhere in europe if not Germany.