Hi, I'm Serena Eley. My primary career goal is to become a condensed matter experimentalist, possibly focusing on superconductivity research. Secondly, I dream of becoming an astronaut because of my interest in both a mentally and physically challenging career. In June 2002, I graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a B.S. in physics. I intend to enter a graduate program in physics in the fall of 2004.

I have performed research at North Carolina A&T State University, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, NASA's Ames Research Center, Raytheon Infrared Operations, the National University of Singapore, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, and the Superconductivity Research Lab (SRL) of the International Superconductivity Technology Center (ISTEC) in Tokyo through the Luce Scholars Program. These experiences involved a spectrum of fields: mechanical engineering, astrobiology, optics, cavity quantum electrodynamics, detector physics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and particle physics. Additionally, I was the team leader of a research group that performed an experiment in microgravity on the KC-135.

Beyond academics, I am an avid runner and rollerblader. In April 2003, I participated in my first marathon. Finishing in 3 hours and 26 minutes, I placed 3rd in my age group for non-professional women in the Nagano Marathon in Nagano, Japan. In addition to academics and athletics, community service is very important to me. Because I believe that intelligence, motivation, and success is more a product of circumstances than genetics, I think that high schools in the U.S. need to be more responsible for encouraging students and introducing them to the range of opportunities in life.