Issue link: http://fairmont.uberflip.com/i/1487959
ALUMNI ACTION! On the Frontlines of COVID-19 I n July, 2019, Fairmont Prep alumna Allison Cheung, Class of 2014, arrived in Australia to begin her work in the field of epidemiology as a Fulbright Scholar. When news broke about a new coronavirus that following January, the alarm bells started ringing for Allison, who earned a B.S. in Molecular Biology and an M.S. in Public Health from Yale University. She recognized that the time for her to put her academic training into practice had arrived — and in a big way. Unfortunately, the Fulbright Scholar Program was put on pause because of the pandemic, so Allison approached her Fulbright supervisor at the University of Melbourne to see if he could connect her with someone in Australia who was working on COVID-19. In February, Allison was invited to join the Epidemiology and Surveillance Team at the Department of Health for the State of Victoria. An expert in statistical modeling, she worked at the forefront of evaluating the effectiveness of various diagnostic tests for the virus — something that would ultimately contribute to early diagnosis and better outcomes for people all across the world.* From Middle School to College Freshman A s the old adage goes, "Where there's a will, there's a way." That certainly holds true at Fairmont, where we strive to be a school that places no limits on what our students can do. So when Historic Anaheim alumna Stellina Ao was ready to take pre-calculus in the sixth grade, her teachers and administrators went to work and made it happen. The very next year, at age 12, Stellina was accepted to California State University, Los Angeles through their Early Entrance Program! And the math class she took the first semester of her freshman year? Pre-calculus —which she says she was extremely well prepared for. A computer science major with a double minor in mathematics and biomedical engineering, Stellina's current research interests include artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Upon graduation from CSULA next spring, she hopes to create a detailed computational model of the human brain in order to make a meaningful contribution to the medical field. *Video used by permission from Fulbright Australia