American Heritage
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ALUMNI NEWS
KRISTINA PARDO
Class of 2010 Exploring the Universe at Princeton
K
ristina Pardo graduated from American Heritage in 2010 after attending for four years. Her favorite subjects were band and physics, and she said, “Ms. Imerbsin was (and still is) a huge inspiration to me. She totally turned around a struggling music program. It’s Prospect Gardens, really amazing what she has been able to do with the band Princeton University program in such a short amount of time.” Nassau Hall, the oldest In addition to marching building at Princeton. (Fun fact: Another in the band, Kristina was inAHS alumnus took volved in as many of the inthis picture of Kristina.) strumental music ensembles at American Heritage that she could possibly join! She also played in the symphonic band, jazz band, symphony orchestra, and the pit orchestra for two of the musicals. “I basically lived in the band room,” said Kristina. Kristina hangs out with other AHS band “I know I was happiest alumni who are now at Princeton. (Left when I was hanging out with to right: Kristina Pardo, AHS ‘10, Alvaro Cuba, AHS ‘11, Bradley Snider, AHS ‘13, my friends–Marla, Angel, Danielle Taylor, ‘14 and Ben,” she reflected. “We extremely supportive, and used to do homework (or just I have had many great exprocrastinate) together in the periences.” She is currentband room every afternoon. I really miss them, and I will ally working on a project to find supermassive black holes in ways treasure the memories of the time I spent with them.” dwarf galaxies. This would give greater insight into supermasKristina shared that having the opportunity to enroll in a sive black hole evolution and their link to galaxy evolution. In great variety of AP classes at American Heritage gave her a addition, she recently had a proposal accepted researching the strong background in all the major subjects, especially math time on the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Kristina explained and physics. Many times throughout her first few semesters as that the satellite telescope will be looking at two nearby galan undergraduate student at Furman University, she said she axies with huge (50,000 light years long!) gas bubbles that thought about how much easier it was than American Heriare believed to be powered by the central supermassive black tage. She added that American Heritage developed her writholes. ing skills and prepared her well for writing research papers. In her free time, she trains for triathlons and Half IronKristina just finished her first year as a PhD student in men, and she also enjoys attending the trivia nights hosted by the Astrophysical Sciences Department at Princeton Univerthe Graduate School at Princeton. She said her future career sity. She said, “The work is challenging, but the department is goal is to be a professor of astrophysics at a research university.
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2015
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