Writing

Watching the gang from Friends hang out at Central Perk so often made me believe that I would be doing that a lot more in my 20s. I imagined holding a large, foamy cappuccino while listening to my friends gossip about their love lives and petty work grievances. But in real life, especially on a big campus like UW-Madison, those moments don’t always happen on their own. Mesh is trying to change that, one coffee chat at a time.

In this article, I discuss the growing fears of chemicals in food marketing, the difference between poison and toxicity, and the concerns about synthetic chemicals in food.

Do you take your coffee with a spoonful of sugar or use a nonsugar sweetener such as Sweet’N Low or Equal? These nonsugar sweeteners are called nonnutritive sweeteners because they contain little to no calories per gram, compared with nutritive sweeteners such as sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup.

Although nonsugar sweeteners have long been considered safe to eat, newer studies show that they may contribute to the conditions that they are supposed to prevent through interactions with the gut microbiota.

I contributed a short section, “Develop your industrial knowledge,” to an article titled, “Recent hires reflect on the industry experience,” where I and other new industrial chemists share what they’ve learned so far and what advice they have for others.

What is your passion? For me, it’s music. I played piano since I was 5 and played in an orchestra since middle school. When I got to college, I thought I should focus on my studies and didn’t touch my violin for a few months. But that didn’t last for long. I realized that playing music was a lifelong habit that I didn’t want to give up. The only problem was that there wasn’t a place for someone like me, a STEM major, to play music for fun.