“As long as you’re excited and you’re motivated to work on it, then you should never feel like you can’t do it.”
These are the encouraging words of Dr. Katie Bouman in an interview by Time Magazine on April 11, 2019.
This week, Dr. Bouman was an important part of the international team that published the first photo of a black hole, and one of the few female scientists on the project. She is a great example of that women belong in STEM and that we need more of them.
The Gifted Children’s Association of BC would like to officially congratulate Dr. Katie Bouman and the 200 person strong Event Horizon Telescope Project. We would also like to highlight that this type of success is facilitated when we support bright minds early in life.
Dr. Bouman is an electrical engineer from West Lafayette in Indiana, US. Her passion for images started already in high school, where she was allowed to deepen her knowledge in the imaging field, by collaborating with scientists at Purdue University. Her work with a university at this early age is an example of what in giftedness education is called acceleration.
The acceleration model is a very useful way of allowing gifted children to stretch into their areas of passion and work with their intellectual peers. Studies at university during high school is only 1 of the 18 types of acceleration models for gifted students, according to the A Nation Empowered by the US Acceleration Institute.
Please enjoy listening to Dr. Bouman’s Ted Talk “How to take a picture of a black hole.”
