List of 8 items.

• Favorite subject:

  AP Chemistry, no contest. “It’s really interesting to see fundamentally how the world works at a very, very granular level by looking at atoms and molecules. The labs and experiments we do in Ms. St. Hilaire’s classes are more interesting than anything I’ve ever done before.”

• How she’s gained confidence:

  Through practice, trial, and error—most notably in English class. “I’m a big believer that if you practice something, you can get really good at it. When I first came to Ellis, I didn’t have many intelligent things to say about the books we were reading because it was a skill I hadn’t practiced yet. But now, three years in, I’ve gotten much better at those discussions because I’m constantly practicing. My confidence comes from the fact that if I know I’ve done something a ton of times, I know I can do it again if the need arises.”

• Looking ahead with a creative mindset:

  “I like to think about my future in terms of what I would like to end up doing and what I’m interested in. One of my favorite questions to ask adults is 'how does creativity manifest in your job?’ I don’t think I could do a job that doesn’t require any creativity, so I’ve developed this idea of what skills I want to use even if I haven’t figured out what I want to do just yet.”

• On her horizon:

  Finalizing her next science fair project. “I’m really interested in the single-use surgical masks people are wearing right now. I’m interested in looking at how these masks break down into microplastics and how they end up in our food chain.”

• What she's good at:

  Formulating, researching, and collecting data for science fair experiments. In ninth grade, she won the Senior Division Student Carnegie Science Award for her Pittsburgh Regional Science & Engineering Fair project, Formaldehyde Production During E-Liquid Degradation. “My favorite science fair project of all time looked at how heating up e-liquid in e-cigarettes produces unwanted toxins, particularly formaldehyde. I know a lot of people who vape and I’m interested in the long-term effects. I expanded the experiment my sophomore year and designed a project that looked at how human A549 cells react to formaldehyde. I worked in a lab at Carnegie Mellon University after school and on the weekends.”

• On taking time for teamwork:

  As a captain on the varsity soccer team, Eleanor has not only led her team to the playoffs two years in a row, but has made sure that her team feels like a family. “Soccer has become increasingly more fun every year. We eat bagels and listen to music as a team before we ride to weekend games together. The family dynamic is really great.”

• A passion for the science of baking:

  “My love for science and creativity is directly correlated to why I like to bake. I love the problem-solving that appears in both fields. Sometimes, my recipes don’t go as planned and I have to figure out what went wrong. If my bread doesn’t rise properly, I have to fix my mistake and find a solution. There's this narrative that baking is super precise and you have to be really in tune with the accuracy of the measurements but I think that's a misconception. You can still be creative when baking. There are parts of every recipe you can tweak, which I like to do.”

• How she uses her voice:

  By educating others at science fairs and in the debate club. “There’s a public speaking aspect that I really enjoy in both debate and science fair. At science fairs, I’m communicating my data and my results, and in debate, I’m communicating my ideas and arguments.”