Graduate Student Highlight: Edward Hilvano
Each week, the Department of Chemistry highlights graduate students who are doing great work around the department. In this installment of our highlight series, we are featuring Edward Hilvano, who is a second-year student in the Nacsa lab.
Edward’s work focuses on developing methods of activating unfunctionalized heterocycles through electrochemistry.
This week, we met virtually with Edward to discuss his life in and outside of the lab! Please enjoy our interview with Edward Hilvano.
Question: How did you get interested in chemistry?
Answer: I’m one of those people who likes school and thinks it’s one of the best things ever. Chemistry was the first subject that made me feel like I was thinking and reasoning things out. It didn’t feel like I was checking every single folder tucked away in my brain just to remember a factoid.
Q: What inspires you as a scientist?
A: Being able to make contributions to science that could indirectly or directly help people out. Selfishly, learning and being able to do new things is something really important to me. I think learning for learning’s sake is also extremely valid (although some people would probably say otherwise).
Q: What accomplishment are you most proud of?
A: Being able to go to graduate school overseas. It was a tough ride to get here from a not-so-privileged country, but the three years of applying and all the application fees were worth it (I think).
Q: Where did you grow up? (Tell us a fun fact about your hometown if you want)
A: I grew up in Quezon City, Philippines. We have extremely bad traffic. (It’s not fun but it’s a fact).
Q: Do you have any hobbies?
A: I’m very much an indoors person. I like playing video games. I also love to sing and dance (if things panned out a little differently, I like to think I would have ended up as a theater major). The only time I like to spend time outdoors is when I play tennis.
Q: What’s your favorite way to spend a day off?
A: I like to practice singing. I feel bad for my roommates sometimes because I cause a ruckus. I also like to bake on my days off. I try my best to make cakes for my friends’ birthdays.
Q: If you could have dinner with anybody (living or dead), who would it be and why?
A: It would be awesome to have dinner with Roger Federer. I am a massive tennis fan, and that dinner would make my lifetime if that happened.
Bonus Question: Do you have any fun science trivia to share?
A: ClArK is a very interesting name. It’s one of the few names that you can spell with atomic symbols that have consecutive numbers. GaGe is the only other name I can think of.
Thanks to Edward for these excellent and thoughtful answers! We hope you enjoyed this interview. Stay tuned for more graduate student highlights in the weeks to come!