Graduate Student Highlight: Rebecca Balaj
Each week, the Department of Chemistry highlights a graduate student who is doing exciting work around the department. In this installment of our highlight series, we are featuring Rebecca Balaj, who is a fourth-year student in the Zarzar group.
Rebecca is currently working on a project centered around non-equilibrium phase behavior in emulsion droplets. Her research broadly focuses on studying liquid-liquid dynamics and using multiphase droplets as soft materials.
This week, we met virtually with Rebecca to discuss her life in and outside of the lab! Please enjoy our interview with Rebecca Balaj.
Question: How did you get interested in Chemistry?
Answer: I actually studied a combination of chemical engineering and creative writing in undergrad. I found that chemical engineering specific research wasn’t as fundamentally interesting to me, and, after I graduated, I decided to go to graduate school to just pursue learning about what I wanted to know more about.
Q: What inspires you as a scientist?
A: There’s a lot of different answers I could give here: I’m fundamentally interested in understanding the world and the things around me, but I’m also very invested in scientific communication and just plain learning. Learning and discovering and voraciously consuming knowledge excites me.
Q: Where did you grow up? (Tell us a fun fact about your hometown if you want)
A: I’m from New York City! Queens, specifically. It’s a bit of a different atmosphere from State College, that’s for sure. Uhhh, fun fact? Well, did you guys know that the Empire State building has its own zip code?
Q: Do you have any hobbies?
A: I cycle through a lot of random interests—playing video games, cooking, and reading. More recently, I’ve been into baking. I went through a bread-making phase in quarantine (as many people seem to have), and this carried over into making various deserts. I’m on a quest to bake the perfect batch of macarons.
Q: Do you have any pets?
A: I have two kitties! Simba and Luna. They’re in their terrible twos and are always coming up with new ways to drive me up the wall. But they’re adorable, so I’m not too upset.
Q: What’s your favorite way to spend a day off?
A: Relaxing? These days if I have some time off, I’ll spend it virtually catching up with some friends from undergrad. Once the weather warms up a bit, I’m looking forward to catching some sun.
Q: What’s your dream vacation?
A: I was supposed to go to Asia before the pandemic started—I’m not sure if this is a ‘dream’ vacation, but I’m a big fan of traveling to new cities and just roaming the streets. In a parallel universe, I spent a good chunk of summer 2020 in Tokyo.
Q: If you could have dinner with anybody (living or dead), who would it be and why? (And what would you eat?)
A: This is a deep question, which I could answer in twenty different ways given the chance. Frankly, I’d love to just have dinner with a bunch of my friends and maybe have a potluck. It’s been a while since that’s happened.
Thanks to Rebecca for these excellent and thoughtful answers! We hope you enjoyed this interview. Stay tuned for more graduate student highlights in the weeks to come!