A May graduate with a degree in biology—and one of Pomona’s Commencement speakers as senior class president—Andreah Pierre ’22 has been interested in marine science and conservation for as long as she can remember. After earning a Posse Foundation scholarship followed by a prestigious summer fellowship, she will combine her STEM background with a rediscovered love of art to pursue a career as a scientific illustrator.

1. Make your entrance near the ocean. Born in Miami, Pierre had an early affinity for the nearby Atlantic. “The best part was swimming with my sister,” she remembers. “Fish would pass by us, and we were like, ‘What are they?’”
2. Stay curious. Nurture an interest in coral reefs, sea turtles and the effects of pollution as a student at South Broward High School, a marine science magnet school in Hollywood, Florida.
3. Take an Advanced Placement art class and learn to paint. “The funny thing is, after sophomore year I never picked up another paint brush,” Pierre says. “My whole life was very much, you’ve got to do science, you’ve got to get a good job, and art did not seem like an option to me in terms of getting a good job.”
4. Find your posse. Learn about the Posse Foundation, a program that selects talented students from the same city to attend an elite out-of-state college together on full-tuition scholarships, acting as each other’s support systems. Earn a Miami STEM Posse scholarship to Pomona, where biology students go whale watching on the Pacific.
5. Apply for the prestigious Doris Duke Conservation Scholars program at the University of Washington, which provides two summers of experiential learning in the Pacific Northwest. For your second-year summer internship, join The Whale Museum staff in Washington’s San Juan Islands.
6. Tasked with entering data on whale sightings reported to the museum, follow a mentor’s suggestion to develop an illustrated field guide to whales and other marine mammals to help the public tell a gray whale from a humpback. In the process, rediscover your love of art.
   
7.  Download a $10 app. After starting with a free paintbrush program, discover more sophisticated computer graphic tools that help you produce detailed images pointing out key features such as fins, flukes and surface behaviors. “What makes my field guide different from any other book you grab about whales is that the book will tell you all about the whale, versus my image is literally meant to only point out the things that you’d see if you were on the water,” Pierre says.
   
8. Turn your summer project into your senior thesis, testing whether your field guides help people correctly identify types of whales and other marine mammals with the tips and images you provide. (The answer is yes.)
9. Learn about Cal State Monterey Bay’s post-baccalaureate program in scientific illustration. Apply and get accepted for a one-year graduate certificate that starts in September, with courses such as botanical illustration, zoological illustration and professional practices for science illustrators, followed by a 10-week internship.
10. Stop to watch the elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park on a trip along the California coast and realize that state and national park signage needs science illustrations too. “A lot of them are old, the paint’s chipped and there is new information from the last 10 or 20 years that should be on there,” Pierre says. Build your portfolio as you look to follow other graduates of the Monterey Bay program, whose work can be found in such places as the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History, National Geographic and Scientific American magazines, and at zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens across the country.

The discovery of galaxies with little or no dark matter is perplexing to scientists and challenges existing notions of how galaxies form. In a paper published in Nature Astronomy in February, a team of researchers led by Jorge Moreno, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, shared evidence they have found that may explain this baffling observation. Scientific American featured Moreno in a podcast about the work in April.

“For 40 years, astrophysicists have believed that all galaxies have dark matter,” Moreno explains in a campus interview.

That hypothesis was challenged in 2018, when Shany Danieli at Princeton University, who is the second author of the new paper, and Pieter van Dokkum of Yale published their finding of a galaxy in the real universe that lacked dark matter. A second such galaxy was reported in 2019. Astronomers use the term “real universe” to differentiate between what is seen in physical observation and what is found through computer simulation.

“Their discovery posed a huge challenge to the dark matter model of galaxies,” Moreno continues. “Many astrophysicists were suggesting that maybe we need to get rid of the idea of dark matter. Maybe we even need to modify the laws of gravity.”

Moreno took a sabbatical leave in 2020-21 to dig deeper into the challenge posed by these galaxies that lacked dark matter. He drew on his expertise in creating galaxy simulations and using supercomputers to model galaxy formation. Joining in the worldwide effort were astrophysicists from Princeton, UC Irvine, Caltech, the University of Zurich and other institutions.

The simulation modeled evolution over billions of years in a swath of the universe that was 60 million light years across. In it, the researchers identified seven galaxies lacking dark matter.

Researchers employed a cosmological simulation (FIREbox) to re-create numerical analogues (and explain the existence) of the two observed dark-matter deficient galaxies.

Researchers employed a cosmological simulation (FIREbox) to re-create numerical analogues (and explain the existence) of the two observed dark-matter deficient galaxies.

“What we found is that these galaxies initially had a lot of dark matter, and they had a lot of gas,” says Moreno. “But they fell into bigger systems. What we discover is that to become a galaxy without dark matter, it must interact with a galaxy that is a thousand times bigger than it is.”

Moreno drew on his identification with Indigenous peoples to name the galaxies found in the simulation. With the help of Doug Ingram, a Cherokee who teaches in physics and astronomy at Texas Christian University, Moreno obtained the permission of Cherokee leaders to give the galaxies the names of seven Cherokee clans: Bird, Blue, Deer, Long Hair, Paint, Wild Potato and Wolf.

“I’ve identified with these galaxies,” Moreno says. “These galaxies are not supposed to exist. They were supposed to be destroyed as they battled with massive galaxies, but they survived.”

Moreno finds a parallel in his Indigenous ancestry. Growing up in Mexico and the United States with a blossoming interest in mathematics, he didn’t see many scientists of color with whom he could identify, and navigating the power structures of academia was often challenging.

Sometimes Moreno felt excluded, and more than once he was mistaken for a janitor rather than a physicist. But, he says, “I had many mentors who believed in me. Sometimes they were warm, and sometimes they were harsh. But both were helpful in my growth to be the best version of myself, not to give up.”

As a theoretical astrophysicist and professor, Moreno honors his roots by investing in the success of the next generation of scientists of color. “I don’t want them to learn science,” Moreno says. “I want them to become scientists.”

While Moreno challenges all of his students to grow academically, he is invested in helping them find more than answers to questions in physics. He aims to help them discover, as he has, their place in the world of science. “For me, the scientific endeavor has been one of the most joyful things,” he says. “The message I want to send to my students is one of hope: ‘You belong.’”

Close relationships with professors are one of the special qualities of a Pomona College education. Each year, juniors and seniors vote for the Wig Awards, the highest honor bestowed on Pomona faculty, in recognition of exceptional teaching, concern for students and service to the College and community. This year, as in-person learning returned after more than a year of Zoom, seven professors were selected and confirmed by a committee of trustees, faculty and students.

2022 Wig Award recipients, from left; Assistant Professor of Media Studies Ryan Engley, Associate Professor of Politics Amanda Hollis-Brusky, H. Russell Smith Professor of International Relations and Professor of Politics Pierre Englebert, Professor of Computer Science Tzu-Yi Chen, Willard George Halstead Zoology Professor of Biology Nina Karnovsky, Assistant Professor of Economics Malte Dold and Associate Professor of English Jordan Kirk

Each year, Pomona graduates and undergraduates are awarded prestigious scholarships and fellowships for study in various places around the world. Downing Scholars and Gates Cambridge Scholars head to the University of Cambridge in England for graduate work. Fulbright Scholars and Watson Fellows travel to an array of international locations. Rangel Fellows train for careers in the U.S. Foreign Service. Knight-Hennessy Scholars pursue graduate studies at Stanford University. Goldwater Scholarships are awarded to undergraduates studying sciences, mathematics and engineering. Beckman Scholars earn mentored undergraduate research experiences in chemistry, biological sciences and related areas.

Beckman Scholars

Louie Kulber ‘23
Daniela Pierro ‘23

Downing Scholars

Kate Aris ’22
Jacinta Chen ’21
Calla Li ’22
Paul McKinley ’22

Fulbright Scholars

Kristine Chow ’22
Kelly Ho ’22
Brady Huang ’22
Steven Osorio ’22
Sayde Perry ’22
Nathan Shankar ’22
Ruby Simon ’22

Gates Cambridge Scholar

Sofia Dartnell ’22

Goldwater Scholars

Hannah Caris ’23
Jonathan Elisabeth ’23

Knight-Hennessy Scholar

Isaac Cui ’20

Rangel Fellow

Salamata Bah ’20

Watson Fellows

Xiao Jiang ’22
Mark Diaz ’22