 When I was three years old, I first learned the mechanics of basic ballet steps, and I was enthralled and I really kept pursuing ballet pretty much non-stop until I began college. I attended a professional ballet school. When I was 14 years old, I discovered that a mass was growing in my stomach and what I didn't realize at the time was that it was a malignant cancerous tumor. I had multiple surgeries to deal with the main tumor, but it was an arduous process of at least five years, and even now whenever I have a painful stomach ache, it's certainly a front of mind. My cancer diagnosis was not just the immediate loss of my ability to dance, but it also meant the loss of this dream I had previously to pursue ballet full-time. A month into my first semester at Berkeley, my dad was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, and he was given approximately two years to live. It was devastating for me at the time. I was suddenly thrust into this brand-new world where my dad, who had always been such a stable character in my life, was suddenly extremely weak and vulnerable, and I had to take on this new position as his caregiver. The COVID pandemic hit right about when I was considering withdrawing. As a result, I was able to go home and continue caring for my dad while simultaneously taking my classes virtually. School has really been a safe haven for me where I'm able to control my life in a way that I had really no control over personally. So let's talk about what we learned this semester. Sort of on a whim, I decided to take a class called refugee itineraries and identities, which was to satisfy a breadth requirement, and I absolutely fell in love with the subject. The issue we kept running into was that in order to present in front of a commission, you want to use this emotive language. And so we wanted to get closer to this set of my distribution. It's been really fun for me to be able to use data science techniques and open-source technologies to determine the perpetrators of crimes and hopefully hold them accountable. This relates to this concept of heavy and plasticity, which is the idea. My neuroscience coursework has been so great for me to be able to understand how the mind works, but also how trauma manifests, and that's particularly relevant to the human rights field, where eventually researchers need to interview victims of war crimes and be informed about the way that trauma affects people. These expressions will be specific to our culture or not. My professors here have been incredible. They are extremely knowledgeable about their course material, but they're also deeply committed to making sure students learn and take things away from their class beyond the literal material that was taught. Katie has been a student here at the Human Rights Center for several years. Katie is one of what I would call a blue moon student. They're one of this rare handful of students who come through who you know will go on to do extraordinary things for the world. I don't think you can work on anything with her without being stunned by the level of commitment she brings to the research that she does. She had a project where she was provided with a tremendous amount of data about judges' decision-making in asylum cases. And what they found was a potential bias in the way that judges decide whether someone should get asylum or not. The work was so groundbreaking that after she and her colleagues submitted this as a paper to a major competition, they walked away with the best paper award. I think she has been an extraordinary example of what you can do when you pursue justice through science, technology, and law. I'm thrilled to be pursuing a career that for me is impactful, urgently needed, and so relevant. Who knows what my life would have been like as a professional ballet dancer? But I know that ballet will always be a part of me, even as I begin my journey in law.