Her name is Cheyenne Polius and she just completed her Integrated Masters in Physics and Astrophysics with Employment in the UK. Her Masters project was all about using programming to try to figure out how some pretty special isotopes (Aluminium-26 and Iron-60) got into our Solar System over 4 billion years ago!
She's really enjoyed pursuing her passion for astrophysics but there have been times that she felt isolated because there just weren’t that many people who looked like her in her department. She was also the only Black woman. So although most of the people she interacted with were friendly, it was just hard to connect with a lot of them especially coming from a completely different culture too! She was born and raised in St Lucia so she had to deal with a difference in culture and demographic all at the same time. Eventually she found a community of Caribbean and African people at her university so that helped make up for the lack of diversity in her department.
She reached out to her department recently to express all of this and they are already making changes to make the department more diverse and inclusive! So although her experience may not have been the best, she's so happy they’re willing to make sure that future students have a better experience.
This is what a scientist looks like.
If you enjoyed Cheyenne's story and want to connect with her, her Twitter is @astrochey.
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