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Maria Cuellar
I was born in Bogota, Colombia, and I lived there until I was 12. My parents and grandparents were always involved in helping the underprivileged by donating money and clothes to children from the street and having large Christmas parties with them. My grandmother picked up children from the streets who didn't fit in the overflowing orphanages, and she became a foster mom to 158 of them. She ended up adopting a couple of them. This had a huge impact in my life, and since I was young I started doing community work.
I went to high school in Escazu, Costa Rica. In my spare time I worked with abused girls that were my age, and I taught four-year-old children pre-reading skills, which helped them develop a passion for reading and prevented them from dropping out of school early.
Then I went to college in Portland, OR, USA, and was one of five women out of 350 people who graduated from Physics in the college. One summer while studying I worked with Unite for Sight (uniteforsight.org) in Thailand and fell in love with the idea of free medical care. I am very interested in Math and Physics (my undergraduate thesis was about gravitational lensing and dark matter), but I want to spend some time working for social justice and equality.
All of these experiences have helped me come to this conclusion: I want to provide valuable science education for those who can't easily get it and I want to fight for social equality.








