What are your hobbies?
Playing alto saxophone, playing piano, singing, science and engineering (including research), discussing politics with everyone, watching Ole Miss Sports, kayaking, cooking, reading, going to church, watching movies, and spending time with my amazing friends and family.

What makes you special and unique?
What makes me special and unique is the fact that I have diverse interests and am involved in many different activities. On one hand I am very scientifically involved, but I’m also in the Pride of the South Marching Band, University Wind Ensemble, play the piano, and sing. I’m fascinated by politics and want to go to law school, but I also love kayaking and watching Ole Miss sports.

What is the best advice you have ever received?
"It is not what you have; it’s what you do with it that counts." – Wendy Aubé (Mother)

Name one thing you cannot live without.
I can’t live without my Bible or my friends and family.

What is the most valuable lesson you ever learned?
I should do whatever I want to do regardless of what people may say. Goals can be achieved through hard work.

Who is your most valued role model and why?
My great-grandmother Lena Murdock is one of the most amazing women I have ever met. Working as a child of a sharecropper picking cotton in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, Granny had an eighth grade education and had to help raise her sister’s children. She was not able to get married young, as most girls did, but finally married my great grandfather, who was in the navy. Still alive at the age of ninety-four, she has come so far from so little and I can only admire her.

What was your most unexpected moment?
A moment that I truthfully did not expect was winning Miss Leaf River Valley. Only 19 years old, I entered to get experience in the Miss Mississippi program and hopefully some scholarship money. It was unexpected but truly exciting.

What is your workout routine?
My workout routine is to do Pilates and water aerobics on a regular basis, but also cardio at least three days a week.

What has been your biggest accomplishment to date?
Beating people from 42 different countries and all 50 states, my greatest accomplishment is winning third place of over 200 in the environmental science category at INTEL International Science and Engineering Fair.

What is the best compliment you have ever received?
"My daughter wants to be just like you!" – Many different mothers I’ve met.

What is your secret wish?
Secretly, I’ve always wanted to be the President of the United States. I love politics, and just imagining the opportunity to do so many things for our country is awe-inspiring!

What was your most embarrassing moment?
When I was in the 7th grade, on my very first day with the older group at band camp I had a completely humiliating experience. We were rehearsing on the band practice field, and I fell down on a root, in the mud, in my brand new white shorts. No one stops to help me up, and then they march OVER me, not even around me. Now aside from the fact that I had dirty white shorts, I also dropped my several thousand dollar saxophone and had a huge dent in the bell. I then had to use this same dented saxophone until I was a sophomore in high school.

What is your biggest guilty pleasure?
Fried food; I live in the South and was taught to cook by my grandmother. It’s a blessing and a curse.

What is your favorite movie and why?
Pride and Prejudice is a beautiful movie. Based on the Jane Austen book, this romantic movie always takes me back to a simpler place in time.

What is your favorite color and why?
Purple!! When I was in elementary school I couldn't decide between pink or blue so I mixed them together and got purple. Now I still like it more than any other color.

What do you like to do for fun... relaxation... recreation?
I like to spend time with my friends and family, watch movies, kayak, and read.

What would be your dream vacation or destination?
If I could go anywhere on vacation, I would go to France to see the Aubé river, and the Aubé region. It would be so thrilling to see the home of my ancestors.

What do you like best about your hometown?
I love the people of my hometown. Seminary, MS is very small, but everyone is so kind and will go out of their way to help you.

What do you like best about the state of Mississippi, besides our food & hospitality?
There are many reasons to be proud to be called a Mississippian, but my main reason is because of our altruism. Mississippi, though the poorest state in the union, gives more of their earnings away to people and groups in need than any other state.

What's in your CD player or on your iPod right now?
Josh Groban, Gospel, Classic Rock... a little bit of everything really. I'm not too fond of country music though.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?
In ten years, I hope to be a graduate of a prestigious law school, married, and working in public service.

Who am I?
I am a person of strong faith. I don’t believe science and faith are in competition. Science is simply a discovery of what God created. It is our responsibility to use this knowledge to the betterment of mankind. My goal everyday in everything I do is to take what the Lord has given me and use it to the best of my ability to make the world a better place.

One of the many ways I try to do this is through my job. I’m employed as a physical scientist’s aide for the USDA, but I am funded through the Department of Defense. Monday through Friday I work in lab where I conduct organic chemistry experiments looking for an active substance in natural products. We are looking for an ingredient to go in a pesticide to protect soldiers in Iraq.

Tell us about your occupational experience.
See the question describing me. Somehow this question's answer just flowed into the other answer.

Tell us about your platform.
"My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, "So? Did you learn anything today?" But not my mother. "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?" That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist." -Isidor Isaac Rabi

Since I presented my first science fair project when I was seven years old, I have been immersed in the world of science and engineering. From that time in the second grade until my senior year of high school, I competed in all manner of science competitions, went to science camps, and participated in science clubs. It was completely ingrained in my life.

The University of Mississippi offered me an engineering scholarship. When I entered the school of engineering I realized that I never appreciated the opportunities I had in high school; no other female I met had been so encouraged to enter the field of science. The fact that I was a woman interested in this field is extremely unusual. In every science, engineering, and math class I take, women are in the minority even when there are percentage points more women than men at the University.

Although women have made great leaps in the world of equality, we are still socialized to think that there are certain jobs that should go to men. I fully believe that women are just as intellectual and capable of discovering, inventing, and doing scientific research as men. As Miss Mississippi, I would strive to work toward gender equality in science.