Biography

Hi all, my name is Hannarae Annie Nam and I am from South Korea. I was born in Seoul and lived there for all my life except for the one year that I spent in Boston during my third year of elementary school and the past three years I spent in Walingford, Connecticut, where I attend my current school, Choate Rosemary Hall. I attended Aju elementary school that was located literally 50 meters from my house. After graduating, I attended Chungshin Girls middle school, which was a lot farther away, located 200m from my house. You can tell that I had a pretty convenient childhood.

Since I was little, I enjoyed playing with gadgets and machines, especially things that involved pressing buttons and switches. When I went to a Space Camp in Japan in elementary school, I was thrilled to experience being a space ship commander of a virtual space ship, who was given not only the authority to order people around but also has the responsibility to press the right buttons at the right time. My interest in machines eventually reached out to other sciences, especially physics. Science was therefore always my strongest subject in school I entered a school- wide science competition in middle school targeted for 9th graders as a 7th grader and excelled. However, unsatisfied with the Korean education which only focuses on exams and ignores labs and extracurricular activities, such as track and field, I applied to Choate. Freshmen year at Choate, I took an honors course in physics (taught by Mr. Stowe, the most patient teacher I have ever met), which was a course that always kept me excited to learn more. Other than physics, I also realized that I enjoyed computer science after taking an intensive summer course on computer programming my sophomore year. I only made simple programs that made barcodes, organized class grades, and so on, but it was an experience that taught me how things really work in computer software.

At school, I am a member of the Choate Chamber Orchestra as a violinist. We travelled to Spain this summer (2010) and performed in concert halls and cathedrals of different cities in Spain. I also picked up field hockey my freshmen year, a sport that I have never heard of before I went to Choate. In the spring, I am a sprinter on my Varsity Track and Field team as a hurdler for 100m and 300m hurdle races.

I hope to spend an educational, awarding, and fun summer at Stony Brook this year. Because my plans for the future are so unclear, I hope my experience at this lab will help me find my path.