Profiles

Albert Wang

Albert Wang just graduated from Los Alamos High School (LAHS) in May 2003, but he is already a veteran of two summers working at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL, the Laboratory), and he will be spending the 2003-2004 school year at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Wang, son of Baolian Cheng and Yi-Ming Wang, both LANL physicists (in the Applied Physics Division's Integrated Physics Methods Group and the Thermonuclear Applications Group, respectively), was born in Xinxiang, China. He lived in Illinois for about six years before moving to Los Alamos, which has been his home for about nine years now.

His interests and abilities are unusually varied.

During his time at LAHS, he participated in math competitions at both the state and national level?including the American Mathematics Competitions and the American Invited Mathematics Examination.

In his junior year at LAHS, he was a semifinalist in the United States (U.S.) Chemistry Olympiad. He placed first in New Mexico.

He was a National Merit Scholarship finalist and a winner of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Scholarship.

He was also on the LAHS Debate Team. He and his partner, Bryan Clark, went to nationals in 2003 as one of the top two teams in the state. Their topic was "Mental Health Care," and, Wang said, "We broke into the top 60 teams."

He made the U.S. Physics Team in both his sophomore and junior years (an honor that meant he was one of the top 24 students in nationwide high school competition).

It was his performance as an individual in math and physics competition exams that led to his first experience at the Laboratory. One of his teachers told him about LANL's "Go Figure" program, and he participated. He remembers it as a good experience. "I did fairly well," he said, "so it gave me some excellent opportunities at the Lab."

In the summer of 2002, he worked in the Biological and Quantum Physics Group (P-21). He was involved in neuroscience work, he said, helping with coding. His mentor was Joysree Aubrey in the Hydrodynamics and X-Ray Physics Group (P-22).

As the summer of 2003 approached, he sent out an e-mail asking about possible summer job opportunities at the Laboratory. He ended up at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), where he worked in the Laser Laboratory. His mentor was Jan Boissevain in the Physics Group (P-25).

Wang said he started his summer 2003 job a little late because of the national competition in debate, but he found his work interesting. He hopes to be back at LANSCE in the summer of 2004.

But first there's his freshman year at Princeton.