Hometown: Mandeville, Louisiana

Major: Bachelor of Science in Physics

Post-graduation plans: Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Accolades:

“Paige is an outstanding student with a promising future in research. She distinguishes herself by her maturity, commitment, and independence in all activities proposed. At a personal level, Paige is self-motivated, well-disciplined, and independent, with a radiant personality. She is always putting extra effort into her work and always has room in her schedule to help others on research matters and other endeavors.” – Mariama Rebello Sousa Dias, Associate Professor of Physics

When did you first become interested in physics?

When I started reading some pop-science books by folks like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku, which inevitably led me to A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. That was the book that really made me consider physics as a career. I knew astrophysics wasn’t the field for me, but the way physics explains things carefully and precisely, particularly in quantum mechanics, enraptured me. I came to Richmond planning to do my undergraduate in physics while working with faculty more on the condensed side of things. 

Tell me about some of your internships.

I’ve completed internships at the Naval Research Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. At NRL, I worked on improving the software behind a missile-detection system used in military aircraft. As a materials physics intern at Sandia, I worked on technology known as neuromorphic computing, whose goal is to mimic the massive parallelization and energy efficiency of a human brain for improved computational performance. At this year’s March Meeting, the largest physics conference in the world, I was selected as one of the best presenters of the undergraduate session.

Are you still involved in competitive powerlifting? What do you enjoy about this?

I’ve taken a bit of a break from competing while in college to focus more on my academics and research. That’s one of the areas I plan to focus on in grad school. My involvement in powerlifting has affected every area of my life, from my personal relationships to how I conduct research. Powerlifting requires a delicate balance of optimism and realism. You must not just believe but know that you can do (lift) more but also be aware of the limitations of what your body can handle.

What are your feelings about heading to MIT?

I’m thrilled. Honestly, it still feels a bit surreal. I saw MIT as a bit of a long-shot program, but I knew I would be remiss not to apply. It just so happened that things worked out in my favor.

What do you hope to study there?

I believe the next major technological breakthrough will be from a materials science side, particularly in this burgeoning AI era. We’ve already begun to see the massive energy costs associated with AI training and usage. Materials science will offer us solutions to this problem in two ways, while ushering in a new era of computation. First, materials science will allow for more efficient clean energy production, reducing dependence on “dirty” energy sources that we are being forced back to with these new energy demands.

Second, advances in materials science will provide us with novel computer architectures that will exceed the performance of traditional computers while dramatically reducing energy demands. My goal at MIT is to focus on one of these two problems.