Meet Elizabeth

Elizabeth is a rising senior at Northwest Yeshiva High School set to graduate in 2026. Her scientific interests range from the chaotic properties of intracellular proteins, to mycologically centered ecology, to atmospheric physics and weather analysis. Regarding all of these areas, she is particularly drawn by the application of mathematical concepts to biological or physical problems. She hopes to apply her curiosity to areas with potential to benefit human experience, whether it be through our own bodies, the environments we manipulate, or the atmosphere we rely on. 

In her free time, Elizabeth captains her school Mycology Club where she and her peers wax poetic about the fungi all around us and programs for her school’s engineering team. She also plays classical violin and loves to find new recordings of old favorite pieces or old recordings of pieces she just discovered. She assists with youth baking classes for her local religious community and likes to help take care of her school’s chickens. When she isn’t doing anything else, she might be reading classics, snuggling with her cats, or watching Star Trek, Doctor Who, or old sit-coms. 

Together with her partner Alice Cottrell-Steen and under the guidance of Dr. Jacob Valenzuela and Dr. Chris Deutsch, Elizabeth helped to research the microbial differentiation and metabolic processes of a specific enriched community of microbes sourced from a biogeochemically significant field site. To simulate natural conditions, they constructed Drip Flow Reactors, a reactor system containing a column of sediment and with vertical nutrient/moisture flux. Elizabeth and Alice take daily measurements of the optical density, pH, and Gas Chromatography information and will take endpoint metagenomic measurements of the composition of the attached communities using 16S rRNA sequencing.