Anna Ho by annayqho

Writing

2010-2014: I was one of four members of MIT's Class of 2014 selected to be an MIT admissions blogger. For four years, I wrote biweekly blog posts with the goal of making undergraduate life more transparent to prospective students from around the world. The website is visited by a quarter of a million people per month, and I enjoyed corresponding with prospective students, answering questions about science careers, and offering suggestions for high school preparation. One of my blog posts was featured on the MIT News website and another by the AAS. One of them was on the front page of Reddit! I still occasionally contribute to the site.
2014: I won First Place in MIT's DeWitt Wallace Prize for Science Writing for the Public and was awarded an Ida M. Green Fellowship from the MIT Science Writing department.
2015: I wrote a press release for the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and wrote a blog post for the UniverseToday news site.
2018: I wrote an article about cosmic forensics for the Caltech Letters website.
2019: I wrote an article for the SMA Newsletter on the spectacular transient AT2018cow.

Caltech: I give talks for the public in our lecture hall and in a local bar, and volunteer at public stargazing nights.
Heidelberg, Germany: Through the the Haus der Astronomie (House of Astronomy), I taught a workshop for high school students and published a press release.
McCormick Public Observatory, Charlottesville VA: I started and organized a volunteering program for the NRAO summer interns.

Slides of my public talks are available below.

MIT: I spent one month with Teach For America, teaching math on the Pueblo Pintado Navajo reservation. Over the next few years, I taught 12 different classes for over 500 middle- and high-school students and their parents through MIT's Educational Studies Program (ESP). The subject material ranged from scientific (e.g. an eight-week course on cosmology) to literary (e.g. a three-hour dramatic read-through of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) to improvised (e.g. improvised 5-minute lessons with topics decided by the audience on the spot). During my junior year, MIT sponsored me to travel as an ambassador to Stanford to teach for their ESP program.
Germany: I designed and taught a cosmology workshop for local high-school students.
Pasadena: I designed and taught an eight-week class on multiwavelength astronomy for gifted 7-12 year olds at the Institute for Educational Advancement.

I am the Vice President of Science and Engineering Policy at Caltech (SEPAC), and the Chair of the Science Policy Committee on the Graduate Student Council.

2018: I organized a panel on careers in science policy that was attended by 70 graduate students. To bring different perspectives into dialogue, my committee brought in alumni of the AAAS and CCST policy programs, a Senior Scientist from the RAND corporation, and a Chemistry professor who has been influential in policy from within academia.
I participated in Congressional Visits Day in 2014 and 2017, first as a representative of the American Astronomical Society and then through Caltech. You can read about my experience here and here.
I was one of roughly 40 scientists and policymakers selected for the 2017 International Summer Symposium on Science and World Affairs in Darmstadt, Germany. I gave a presentation on managing Space Traffic.
Through SEPAC and the GSC, I run events to help give graduate students a sense for what careers might be available to them in science policy, lunch discussions on a variety of topics from space traffic to federal nutrition guidelines, and trips to visit policymakers in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.