A grade 12 survivor of the 2013 Super Typhoon “Yolanda” has bagged a scholarship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study astrophysics.
Hillary Andales, 18, earlier topped the 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge International Science Competition for her video explaining Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Andales, whose seaside town of Abuyog was inundated by flood waters during the onslaught of “Yolanda”, said she aims to do more science communication and research.
“We were quite complacent when the storm surge hit us. We did not evacuate,” she said, adding that if scientific jargon was simplified, more people could have understood the implication of a storm surge.
“I was actually really disappointed in myself. Even though I was already interested in science, I didn’t know what a storm surge was,” she said.