Background

A picture of me in Houston, TX.

I was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq, where I spent much of my childhood. When the war began in 2003, my family was directly affected by the unrest in the country. My mom and dad decided that immigrating to Syria would provide a safer future for our family.

I was in the second semester of sixth grade when we moved to Syria, where I continued my education. My parents worked tirelessly to make sure that my brother and I did not lose a year of school. While we were living in Syria, my family applied for immigration through the United Nations. Halfway through ninth grade, my family qualified for immigration to the United States.

We arrived in the United States at the end of 2010 and slowly began building a new life as a family. I continued my high school education in Nashville, Tennessee. During that time, I became very interested in learning English and building on the foundation I had developed in my English courses in Iraq and Syria. During my senior year of high school, I became fascinated by physics, largely because of my physics teacher’s wonderful lecture style. Thank you, Coach Gabe! That experience became a major factor in my decision to study physics in college.

After graduating from high school, I attended Nashville State Community College so that I could explore what I wanted to pursue at a lower cost while working at McDonald’s. I chose physics as my major and took as many physics and mathematics courses as I could while completing my general education requirements.

Around age 19, my family and I became U.S. citizens. I later graduated from community college and received an Honors Transfer Fellowship to Middle Tennessee State University, where I completed my Bachelor of Science in Physics. I earned my Master’s degree in Physics from Texas A&M University in Spring 2021 and continued on to pursue my Ph.D. in experimental high-energy nuclear physics at Texas A&M University.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse