Pacifica Stories

One of our treasured alumni, Emilie Skoog, has been successful in her studies at USC in Earth sciences and biology, and now she’s at MIT obtaining her Ph.D. in astrobiology and geochemistry. Read more about Emilie’s journey post-Pacifica!

As a Pacifican, Emilie was in on all things Pacifica. She was in student leadership, was part of the dance program, played on the volleyball team, excelled in school, set up a non-profit for pediatric brain cancer research, was part of the sports medicine program, and had a strong interest in the STEM fields. Emilie got the most out of her Pacifica education and exemplified what it means to think and live well.

Emilie matriculated to USC, where she planned on studying sports medicine. Her counselors encouraged her to explore, so she signed up for a freshman seminar, “The Space Shuttle and Popular Science.” She was still focusing on sports medicine but slowly started incorporating her new interest in space into her schedule. She volunteered to reconstruct the Ranger VII spacecraft on display at the California Science Center, working alongside retired JPL engineers for eight months.

During her sophomore year, she applied for a summer internship at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. She knew it would be hard to get an interview because she had missed most of the deadlines.

“It was 5 a.m. in Leavey Library, and I got this email,” she said. It was an email asking to set up an interview. “I was like, ‘ Wow, this is my one shot. I can’t mess up.’”

During her phone interview with Matthew Mickens, who later became her mentor, she realized they had some things in common.

“When I was in seventh grade, my science fair project was extremely similar to what he was researching at Kennedy—growing plants with different types of light,” she said, noting his research on LED light and growing a type of Romaine lettuce on Mars.

She beat out some of the nation’s top students and applicants with years of botany experience for the internship. She thinks her enthusiasm for science made her stand out.

At Kennedy, she caught up with her middle school passion: She got to work on Mickens’ research.

“That really changed everything for me,” she said. “That’s when I knew that’s what I was going to do.”

In her junior year, when she started researching in USC Earth sciences and biology professor Jan Amend‘s lab, she changed her majors to biological sciences and Earth sciences. In Amend’s lab, she studies Icelandic lakes that are formed from volcanic activity under ice caps. On top of that, she interned at JPL, investigating how to avoid contamination on Mars when scientists take samples.

Skoog is pursuing her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall. She’ll study astrobiology and geochemistry.

“I don’t think I’m going to solve the origin of life, but I think a lot of people have had that question cross their mind at least once: How did we all get here?” she said. “I think getting closer to answering that question or eliminating some...I think that would be pretty exciting.”

Emilie’s younger brother Noah followed her to Pacifica and USC. Emilie blazed a path that Noah has been keen to follow.