MEET A MEMBER MONDAY
Written by Callie Yuan
Featuring Isabelle Qi
Isabelle Qi, Ridge High School's WiSTEM ambassador, merges her passion for language and STEM, leading events on AI and computational linguistics to inspire her peers in STEM
Senior Isabelle Qi is the Ridge High School chapter of Women in STEM (WiSTEM) ambassador. Upon starting a computational linguistics club at her school, she found many members showed further interest in other STEM topics. Qi was scrolling through Instagram when she came upon a from the WiSTEM Instagram and was inspired to apply as an ambassador and start a chapter.
“It's not the usual story since we weren’t a fully STEM club at first … but decided to operate jointly as a linguistics and Women in STEM club since we had people who were interested and didn’t want to take that aspect away,” Qi said.
Starting a new chapter was challenging, and Qi faced difficulties at first in integrating her computational linguistics club into the larger organization. “We just started having more variety with STEM presentations and workshops. It was more just about getting our club members to … be fully settled in and embrace it,” Qi said. The Ridge High School chapter has since hosted seminars, workshops, and guest speakers covering topics including computational linguistics, natural language processing, generative AI, and semiotics.
As a part of WiSTEM, Qi enjoys being part of a community, having access to all sorts of resources, and being around other people her age who enjoy STEM. “That’s not really available in a lot of places and that encourages people to get more into STEM. Everyone's very passionate and welcoming,” Qi said.
Being a part of the organization helped Qi realize she could combine her interests to pursue a career in technology law, specifically in artificial intelligence. “I consider myself more as a humanities kid but this is a new dream that opened up for me because of Women in STEM,” Qi said.
Her favorite STEM subjects are computing, biology, and physics. “I always liked logic puzzles and riddles when I was a kid, which deals with structured language and challenges you to find information from specific words or phrases.” After a friend introduced Qi to more computational riddles, they founded the initial computational linguistics club together.
In the future, she aims to host speaker events with professors and provide more interactive events. When pursuing goals that may seem out of reach, Qi said, “You just need one person to believe in you, even if that person is yourself. I would have never had all these wonderful experiences if I was just too scared and limited myself by not pursuing STEM,” Qi said.