As a second grader, May Gao (12) indulged in researching the heart in her elementary school science fair, playing knee surgery games and watching slideshows of live surgeries. Now, 10 years later, as a graduating senior, she pursues her passions with the same dedication, whether it be music, women’s rights or biology.

For May, all these interests culminate into one overarching goal: serving others.

“One of the things that unites most of my interests is my interest in serving other people in some form,” she said. “For example, I’m really interested in ethics and morality in medicine, and I feel like most people who want to study medicine or some science think about the aspect where science in technical in the sense that there are researchers in lab coats wearing latex gloves and they’re there to figure out a solution to an issue that’s a scientific issue, but behind all the scenes of that, I think ethics and morality play a huge part in science and STEM in general because ethics and morality is the underlying backbone of everything that we do.”

After reading Paul Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air,” her first book on ethics and morality, she knew how she wanted to integrate biology into her life.

“When I started reading the book, I realized that what he [Kalanithi] was writing about was very different from what other researchers and scientists were talking about,” she said, “He was talking about his love for literature, classics, and how that connects to his work in medicine and just his family life in general. What I found was that everything is surrounded around what life means and not only science tries to figure out what is the definition of life but all other fields are seeking the same thing, and the fact that we are all looking for some answer shows that there is an inherent interdisciplinary nature of everything that we’re doing.”

The amalgamation of ethics and morality and medicine is “like seeing the world in color” for May, an aspiring cardiovascular surgeon, and she hopes to share that color with other young girls interested in STEM.

“The reason why I joined [WiSTEM] is because it again is very interdisciplinary, and it united my interests in the sciences as well as social justice and women’s rights,” she said. “I believe that there are still lots of ongoing issues surrounding women in the workforce and academia, and I think the way that we solve this issue is by educating not only women but also men, and by also teaching young women, especially from a young age, that gender is never an obstacle in pursuing your dreams.”

While May is largely involved in STEM-centric activities, she also stresses the importance of STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics) in her life as a violinist in two orchestras, the Upper School orchestra and Bay Area Youth Music Society.

“Music is one of those things where it’s a universal language that crosses boundaries of age and race and gender, and there aren’t many things in the world like that,” May said. “I feel like communicating ideas and feelings through artistic forms is really important, and that brings me back to the importance of STEAM and not just STEM.”

With multiple interdisciplinary interests, May hopes to make an impact in the fields that intrigue her with a bold mindset.

“I think the most inspirational and hardworking and also just successful [people] in my eyes…are always the ones who have just unabashedly followed their passions without meeting other people’s expectations,” she said.