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Elena at Caltech
ELENA HARTOONIAN Age 24
Elena is of Armenian descent and was born in Iran. She
grew up playing chess with her father and also became interested in helping
him with his hobby of repairing electronics. At age 16, she won the Women’s
Chess Championship in Iran, and won again the following year. In high school
she was required to complete math classes up to calculus, but admits that
she really wasn’t very interested in the subject. Elena and her family came
to the U.S. in 2000.
Elena entered GCC and immediately immersed herself in
ESL classes.
Her previous experience with mathematics changed
dramatically in Kim Foong Chong’s calculus classes. She described the work
as “beautiful.” While doing homework for Carol Paxton’s math class, she
began to use her own formula and found that it was faster. With
encouragement from Paxton, Elena went on to systemize, formally write, and
prove her work. She has sent her theorem to the AMATYC Review and hopes it
will published soon. She also credits Rick Guglielmino with encouraging her
in his physics classes. She took several of his classes and found that he
was not only an amazing lecturer, but also offered interesting labs for his
class. In less than three years, Elena completed over 92 units with a 3.83
GPA.
Inspired by her father, Elena embraced that same
fondness for electronics. She entered Caltech in the fall of 2003, majoring
in electrical engineering and minoring in mathematics. Elena credits the
encouragement and tremendous support of her parents for giving her the
opportunity to concentrate on her studies. Given her love of math and
physics, her future plans include going to graduate school and eventually
doing research. |
