Meet our 2023 McPhee Scholars and Valedictorians Serly Teymoorian and Mya Do

Mya Do and Serly Teymoorian
The College of Science McPhee Scholars and Valedictorians are in their element, Mya Do (left) hanging out with Society of Physics Students club members and Serly Teymoorian (right) ready to do some coding in the Computer Lab.

 

Our two McPhee Scholars and Valedictorians are Mya Do (physics) and Serly Teymoorian (computer science). We celebrate their academic achievement in fields where women are historically underrepresented. Currently, women earn under 25% of degrees in physics and computer science. Their success is all the more notable due to the fact that both are immigrants. Here are their stories:

 

SERLY TEYMOORIAN

While living in Iran, Serly Teymoorian’s family dreamt of coming to the United States. Her parents wanted an American education and a better life for her and her sister. In 2013 they were able to immigrate here.

“I cried every day that first month,” Teymoorian said. “I was in the eighth grade and I didn’t understand a single word in class.” At night, Teymoorian’s mother would use Google Translate to help her daughter with her homework. It only took a month for Teymoorian to understand and feel comfortable communicating in English.

Though her parents were unable to attain a college degree in Iran, both Serly and her sister have attained their degrees. At the urging of Serly, her sister Sision earned her degree in Computer Science in 2022 and Serly has just completed hers in 2023. Their mother is now enrolled in community college pursuing a certificate in business administration.

Serly Teymoorian knew computer science was for her since high school. “We had to do a senior project and I chose to create a guessing game using JavaScript,” she said. She took classes and online tutorials outside of school. Her teacher saw her potential and encouraged her to continue.

Teymoorian transferred to CPP from Glendale Community College in Fall 2021. She recalls that, “It was amazing how CPP pulled off online coursework and being available to students.” She remembers her orientation and how she was able to meet people in breakout rooms and feel connected.

She is thankful for professors like Yu Sun who recommended she apply for internships and gave her resources on how to prepare for interviews. She confides that she prefers working on projects, as opposed to lecture classes.

In addition to her studies, Teymoorian has been working as an instructor at a coding academy, and is an intern at LA Tech IT Career Academy, a collaboration with Microsoft that offers hands-on cyber security and IT training and industry mentorship.

“I’m most interested in software engineering. Though, I’m also really enjoying my game development class,” Teymoorian said. She’s happy with her CPP education and has persuaded many friends to become Broncos too. 

The major theme of her commencement speech is how students can draw strength from their accomplishment of earning their degrees. The same discipline and effort used to do that can help in getting through life’s ups and downs.

 

MYA DO

Mya Do came to the United States in 2019 from Vietnam. She was a high school graduate but took a break in her education to care for her mother who was ill. Her mother had 12 siblings and was not able to go to college but Mya was able to enroll in East LA College. Initially she was an art major but switched to physics before transferring to CPP.

“I always studied science because it was emphasized in Vietnam,” Do said. “Art is subjective. It’s hard to make a living when it depends on other people’s opinion. Physics is logical and you can test and prove it.” She recalls finding some English books on astronomy while she was in Vietnam that piqued her interest.

When asked how she exceled in academics she responded modestly. “I think the only difference between me and others is the time I put in. I also bugged every one of my professors. I always wanted to understand what I was learning, as opposed to only memorizing things,” Do said.

She recalls how faculty like Krishna Sigdel and Alex Small wrote her letters that helped her get into a Cal-Bridge summer program at Stanford. There she studied atmospheric turbulence and how it affects the imaging of telescopes.

At CPP she studied parameter estimation of elliptical images. The application is in microscopy and super resolution imaging. The goal is to know how precisely we can estimate the shape, size, and center of molecules. Do’s research at Stanford and CPP relies on computational work which is something she really likes.

After graduation, Do will enter the Ph.D. program in physics at USC. She plans to study gravitational waves, cosmic microwave background, or dark energy & matter. Do is thankful to faculty Jorge Botana Alcalde and Alex Small who helped her with her grad school application. 

Do is not sure whether she will pursue a career in industry or academia but is leaning toward academia because it will offer chances to help others. The central theme of her commencement speech is the importance of relationships and giving back. She writes, “Success is not measured by individual accomplishments but by what we contribute to the world.”