I started playing table tennis at seven years old at the Associação Cultural e Esportiva de Londrina (ACEL), in Brazil. My first contact with the sport happened because of my brother, who was already playing. At first, I trained at night, twice a week, but I soon joined the team and started training every day in the afternoons. I quickly began competing — first in state championships in Paraná, then at the national level. The sport started getting serious, and at 10 I played my first international tournament, a South American championship in Paraguay.

At 11, because of my father's work, we moved to Rio Grande do Sul. I became Brazilian champion and South American runner-up in the under-13 category, then returned to Londrina for high school. Back then, my goal was to be an athlete when I grew up. I trained five times a week, many hours a day, fully committed to table tennis with the dream of becoming a professional athlete and living from the sport. I played for the Brazilian junior national team in several competitions across Latin America, and even competed at a Youth World Championship in South Africa in 2016.

I missed a lot of school because of travel for tournaments, but I always studied during breaks and on weekends — often in the bleachers of sports arenas. When I was 16, I decided I wanted to study abroad. I researched a lot online about the opportunities and how the process worked. I found out I needed to take the TOEFL and the ACT/SAT, and that American universities valued extracurricular activities just as much as academic performance. I threw myself into that journey: I participated in a research initiation program, prepared for the tests, and went through the application process. I was accepted to Barnard College, an institution affiliated with Columbia University, with a full scholarship.

At 19, I moved to New York, where I completed my undergraduate degree and graduated with a double major in Physics and Computer Science. I dedicated myself fully to my studies, did research from my first year, and in my third year was selected for a summer program at Caltech, working with LIGO. Today, at 25, I am in my third year of a Physics PhD at Rice University, currently living in France/Switzerland and working at CERN.

I share this because it can often seem like a career has to be one thing or another, or that dedicating so much time to sports is a waste. For me, the two were complementary: sport taught me discipline and gave me an independence I carry with me to this day. The truth is that only a small fraction of junior athletes go on to become professionals — but table tennis was always much more than competing. I moved to a new country without knowing anyone, which wasn't easy, but the sport was the through-line: I competed in the NCTTA, served as president of the table tennis club at Columbia and then at Rice, and made friends all over the world. Table tennis has given me a community wherever I go, and I am deeply grateful for that.