Freshman becomes Breakthrough Junior Finalist

After getting all four of her wisdom teeth removed, Faith Nguyen went down to her basement and spent the next three days filming a video explaining string theory. Although she felt “miserable” from “every negative side effect” of the medicine she’d received after surgery, Nguyen pushed through the pain and finished her project in time to submit it to the 2021 Breakthrough Junior Challenge. 

At the time, Nguyen was a high school senior living in Pittsburgh, Pa. Now a freshman at USC majoring in cinematic arts, film and television production, Nguyen became one of the 16 remaining Breakthrough Junior finalists in November.

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge is a global annual competition in which students between the ages of 13 to 18 submit a three minute video on a concept or theory in the life sciences, physics or mathematics. The winner receives a $250,000 scholarship for college and a $50,000 prize for the teacher who inspired them. The winner’s high school is also eligible to receive a $100,000 breakthrough science lab designed by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. 

This year, the challenge attracted more than 3,400 applicants. Each submission underwent a mandatory peer review and an evaluation from a panel of judges, which narrowed down the contestant pool to 30 semifinalists. 

Nguyen researched, wrote, filmed, edited and animated the entire video by herself during quarantine. Nguyen chose to cover string theory because she found the topic interesting and wanted to make the subject more accessible for younger audiences.

“How I thought of it was: String theory is something I’ve heard of before, but I feel like it’s a science topic that everyone kind of knows about very vaguely but can’t explain what it is. I thought it’d be interesting to learn something alongside the audience,” Nguyen said. “Quantum physics, specifically, is a very interesting topic. I’m not a scientist by any means, but I think that it’s very interesting how there’s this whole other world that’s super microscopic and small.” 

Once Khan Academy and the Breakthrough Prize organization named Nguyen as one of the semifinalists, one of her high school teachers, David Morris, made arrangements to promote her video in the school newspaper. Morris encouraged members of the community to vote for her submission on the Breakthrough Facebook page to increase Nguyen’s chances of passing onto the next round as a finalist. 

Morris has served as Nguyen’s mentor for the past two and a half years. The two met when Nguyen enrolled as a student in Morris’s film production course where Morris said he could tell Nguyen had a gift “right away.” 

“There was just a spark in her eye,” Morris said. “She arrived to our high school TV studio already [a] fully-formed [filmmaker] with videos that she’d already made and visions for videos that she wanted to make.”

The more he got to know Nguyen, the more Morris grew to respect her as an artist. Although he said he doesn’t normally let students loan out his equipment, he began letting Nguyen borrow lights, gimbals, tripods and microphones until she graduated. 

“She’s just driven to push her skill set. It’s just such a rare thing, and I’m not sure how teachable it is,” Morris said. “She knew she was good, and she knew she was smart, but she wanted to be better, and she wanted to be smarter. At the same time, [she’s a] very, very humble kid. I mean, she would be the first to criticize her own work.”

Nguyen said her mother, Grace Nah, is another huge source of support and inspiration. Although Nah said she initially had reservations about Nguyen pursuing a career in film, by the time her daughter was about to finish high school, she “knew it was where her passion was” and wanted her to “go for it.” 

“I’d say, [Faith] was always very much of a storyteller,” Nah said. “She was the one who was off in the corner, putting on little plays with her dolls and things like that, so we always knew she had this really, really creative side to her.”

Nah originally told Nguyen about the competition. When Nah found out that her daughter was a finalist, she said it felt deeply “gratifying.” 

“She’s very single-minded when she wants to get something done, and she pulled it off,” Nah said. “We were extremely proud.” 

The 16 finalist videos are currently set for review by all 13 members of the challenge’s Selection Committee, which consists of figures such as Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Terence Tao, UCLA professor and Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics laureate. The Breakthrough Prize will announce the winner of the challenge by the end of November.